“Pesma za Evroviziju 23” – Serbia’s national selection for the Eurovision kicks off tonight, and a total of 32 acts are going to be competing to represent Serbia this coming May in Liverpool. Andjela is competing in this festival for the very first time, and she will try and win the Liverpool ticket with her song “Loše procene” (Eng: Bad Judgements).

Andjela is going to be competing in the second semi final, and she will be the 15th (second-to-last) to perform on the night. We chatted with her to find out more about the story behind her entry in this year’s Pesma za Evroviziju, her career so far, her preparations for the show, as well as her work with Nemanja Antonić – the co-composer of her song who also co-wrote Serbia’s entry in Eurovision 2021 – “Loco Loco”. Check out everything she told us in this interview right here:

Hi Andjela! First of all, thank you for taking your time out for talking to us. For the very beginning of this interview, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about your career so far?

Hi first of all, thank you for the invitation for this interview. I have three songs released and the PZE song “Loše procene” is my fourth official song. My focus is on faster, dancy songs, for which you can make an interesting performance. I have been dancing my whole life so I want to merge these two loves on stage. Professionally I’m also a music producer so I produce and write songs for myself and other musicians. Since college I went deep into video production too so I was able to produce, direct and edit my first three music videos. Earlier more, now less, because of the focus on my musical career, I was doing a side job as a model and a creative director too.

One of the composers of your song, Nemanja Antonić, already has Eurovision experience, having written „Hasta la vista“ and „Loco Loco“ for Hurricane. How did this collaboration come about?

Nemanja Antonic is my long-time best friend. We went to high school together, we studied music production and we spent thousands of hours in the studio together. We’ve been working on many projects together, so this one came naturally. He’s definitely the person who knows me best, both musically and personally, so I know I’m in safe hands when working with him.

Can you tell us more about the story behind „Loše procene“ and the message behind it?

This is the first song I didn’t write by myself that I recorded, so I had to find my personal connection with it. I find it would definitely be the story about going into all different kinds of relationships and not really being honest with yourself, shutting up your instinct when it’s saying what is hard to be heard, because of your emotions, time and effort you put into this relationship. It’s so important to listen to our own feelings and not stay trapped in relations that are not good for us. At the end of the song there is a line “And when you are lying I can see what your eyes are saying”. The truth is always in front of us, we just need to be brave enough to see it, stay loyal to ourselves first and rise from the pain that comes from that truth, because life is beautiful and there are so many amazing people ready to share love and happiness.

What can we expect from your performance in Pesma za Evroviziju?

You can expect the unexpected hah. I mean this is a ballad, so we definitely tried to stay away from typical ballad performances and stay loyal to my love to dance. The biggest challenge is singing a vocally demanding song while dancing, never did anything similar. But the most important thing for me is to enjoy my performance and to convey the energy and emotion to the audience.

If you could collaborate with any of the other 31 contestants in the Serbian Final, who would it be and why?

With all the pop/dance artists like Dzipsii, Filip Baloš, Hurricane, Filarri, Zejna..

Do you normally watch Eurovision, and do you have a favorite Eurovision entry?

Yes I really love to watch Eurovision, I missed some years but mostly I fully followed. Favorite Eurovision songs would be Mahmood with “Soldi”, Loreen with “Euphoria” and Ruslana with “Wild Dances”. On the other hand, my favorite Serbian entries would be Marija Šerifović with “Molitva”, Hurricane with “Loco Loco” and definitely Konstrakta with “In Corpore Sano”. I’m a big fan of Sara Jo and I love her last year’s song “Muškarčina”, although she didn’t represent Serbia.

Why should you be the one to win Pesma za Evroviziju, and represent Serbia in Liverpool?

I would leave that to the audience to say 🙂

What normally inspires you to do music?

There are a lot of things inspiring me when writing, like emotions, experiences, live performances and dance.

Do you have any upcoming projects after „Pesma za Evroviziju“, and after hopefully Eurovision?

Yes, I am planning to release new songs for this summer and work on new music!

Thank you very much for your time, and we wish you the best of luck in Pesma za Evroviziju!

Thank you! 🙂

Give a listen to Andjela’s entry “Loše procene” right here:

Let us know who YOUR personal favorites are in this year’s Pesma za Evroviziju by voting in our polls below: