In 1975, Hajduk won the championship, and Mate Mišo Kovač won the Split Festival with the song “I can’t help but love her.” At the time, he could not even imagine that 46 years later, at the invitation of Hajduk, he would have the opportunity to sing a fan version of the song that has been regularly heard in the stands of his favorite club since the mid-1980s, reports the Hajduk .
The verses “In happy days, in rough days, I can do nothing but love them. Because Hajduk is what makes me happy. I can’t help but love them,” will now be set to music and preserved in a new version co-signed by the famous Split songwriter and musician Saša Antić. More than two months ago, Mišo agreed to cooperate with Hajduk. As the beginning of the campaign, the song was premiered on Radio Dalmatia and immediately provoked emotions and positive reactions from many Hajduk fans.
You can listen to the song HERE.
President Lukša Jakobušić emphasized: “If we were guided exclusively by pure logic, starting with ourselves, some things are simply inexplicable. Hajduk is one, and I think the emotion it evokes is very well reflected through Mišo’s songs. As the great ambassador of Hajduk for more than half a century, Mišo is the ideal person for this cooperation and deserves the attention that Hajduk and the fans can give him.”
Mate Mišo Kovač, a Dalmatian identity, and big Hajduk fan, stated briefly: “I have been supporting Hajduk for 65 years, and I have been the strongest Hajduk player in all that time while in Zagreb. No one has ever approached me or said a rude word about it because everyone knows that Hajduk and Split live in me honestly and without calculation. That’s why at the first invitation from Hajduk to sing the fan chorus of my song, I felt that energy again and immediately said… yes! Because I can’t help but love them.”
Board member Marinka Akrap spoke more about the project: “The time we live in is certainly not the best, but the more we have reason to be positive and send some good messages of hope and togetherness. Sport and music create a special emotion, and we wanted the well-known connection between Hajduk and Mišo to be permanently recorded. I am thrilled that the collaboration was accepted by Saša Antić, who gave a new fan expression to Mišo’s great hit. We combined both modern and urban with the legendary hit, and most importantly, throughout the song, there is a great deal of emotion. We hope to be able to pass on this feeling of love and connection of generations to all people of goodwill, and for all fans, we have prepared special products with the image of Mišo that will cheer them up during the holidays.”
The song was created in the jubilee year of Hajduk’s 110th birthday and the 80th birthday of Mišo Kovač. With the artistic spirit of the inspiring Saša Antić, the song gained a new dimension, returning that childhood feeling, first attachment to Hajduk, and the good and the bad.
“To reflect in football jargon, I already played a lot of games, but I still can’t see what happened to me. A collaboration with Mišo, to Runjić’s music, and in a letter to Hajduk. Simply amazing. I must also mention that the author of the original text is Drago Britvić and composer Stipica Kalođer, and also that the sentence “I can’t help but love her” is my mother’s favorite, so that is it. As for my text, it is about 15 years old, and in it, I collected memories of my days coaching football, first in Lavčević and then in Hajduk, and turned them into a story from my childhood neighborhood. If we are going to look for a message, it would be that everything, in the end, is just a game and love. But a title would come in handy,” said Antić.
The families of the authors of the song’s original version – Runjić, Britvić, Kalođera – and the record companies Croatia Records and Suzy selflessly gave the Club the rights to use it, while the Queen media agency is responsible for the audio and video production of the new song.
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