Na vrhuncu popularnosti Brena se udala za proslavljenog tenisera Slobodana Bobu Živojinović At the peak of her popularity, Brena married celebrated tennis player Slobodan ‘Boba’ Živojinović
shift in its production facility. Nor had any previous singer been discussed at a session of the Central Committee of the Communist party of Serbia. Brena’s popularity was dis- cussed in 1983 primarily because of the fear that her overnight popularity threatened the treatment of reports on the work of the par- ty and functionaries in public media outlets, in terms of both allocated space and time . Brena was the first among all“folk sing- ers” to perform at Belgrade’s Sava Centre, and she did so for 17 consecutive evenings, while she became the absolute world record holder for the number of consecutive con- certs after performing 31 concerts in the hall of Belgrade’s Trade Union House – breaking Yves Montand’s record of 30 consecutive ap- pearances at the Paris Olympia. No one prior to her had been so in-de- mand and so present in the media. She was invited everywhere and by everyone – to por- tray herself in the filmTesna koža (Tight Skin), to open factories, to advertise new products, to attend fairs, to converse with politicians... Nobody in the entertainment world of Yugoslavia had previously made such smart business moves. Thanks to the ideas and vi- sion of her then manager Raka Đokić, with every successive concert, music video and
public performance she rose the bar high- er and constantly changed and advanced, which couldn’t help but be noticed. Every new multi-storey building in the former coun- try was named after her at that time, while she is also the only living singer to actual- ly have a street named after her while she was still alive, in the village of Donja Rača near Kragujevac. She participated in Jugo- vision – the national competition to select an entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest – and sang in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sarajevo. Equally loved in all six republics and two provinces of the former Yugoslavia, while in Mostar the au- dience chanted to her“We are Brena’s, Bre- na is ours”. After Tito, her likeness became the most powerful embodiment of the idea of Yugo- slav and a carefree life. When she circled in a crane around the highest levels of a stadium inTimisoarathataccommodated30,000peo- ple singing the lyrics“Long live Yugoslavia”,
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