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- The reactions which followed Bijelo Dugme's mature album and one of the most weighty of Bregović's works included comparisons with Joni Mitchell's contemplative album Blue.
However, the direction of the evolvent was foreshadowed on the previous album, Eto! Baš hoću!, published in 1976, but few people mention Željko Bebek's first solo album, Skoro da smo isti, published in the summer of 1978 , during the hiatus in Bijelo Dugme's work and Bregović's army stint. It is Bebek who, on his interesting début, his only valuable solo release, coqueted with string orchestra and sophisticated song form, with, just like on Bitanga i princeza, obvious influences by Genesis latest albums, ...And Then There Were Three... and A Trick of the Tail. The pendulum swung from the simplicity of shepherds' rock and hit singles towards sympho-rock and mature songs from Bitanga i princeza [...]
The diaphanous playing, the motive rhythmical patterns, the great songs and, above all, the completely different album context, showed that Bijelo Dugme stopped being a teenage attraction, becoming self-willingly mature band. It was maybe anachronistic in the age of new wave to use a symphonic orchestra , but becoming serious had to be bombastic. Especially when it comes to themes, in introspective love songs about clashes of brutes with princesses, emotional dilemmas in bed, outside of bed, and on the back seat of a car.
The poetic explanation about Christ who was 'a bastard and misery' — probably because he, from the author's point of view, did not manage to redeem anyone – was censored in the song 'Sve će to, mila moja, prekriti ruzmarin, snjegovi i šaš', as it was the case with the exquisite cover by the band's regular designer, Dragan S. Stefanović, replaced with the inferior, unmeaning visual solution.
If we bear in mind the 'shocks' that Bijelo Dugme used to cause before and after that, it all seemed unnecessary, because, before and after that, there was not a domestic album, mainstream and with intimate themes, [...] on which everything fit as harmoniously as on Bitanga i princeza. (en)
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