'I Wrote Those Lyrics': Ceca Stakes Claim to Hit Beograd
Svetlana Ceca Raznatovic joined a debate on X on August 5 and said she wrote part of the lyrics to the song Beograd. The hit has been credited to Dino Merlin for 31 years.
Svetlana Ceca Raznatovic wrote on X on August 5 that she is the author of part of the lyrics to the song “Beograd.” She posted the claim as a direct reply to another user, in a thread that had nothing to do with her at the start. The song has been credited to Dino Merlin for 31 years.
The debate started as a comparison of two singers. One user compared the careers of Halid Beslic and Dino Merlin and argued the two shouldn’t be put on the same level. He cited Beslic’s “Samo za tebe Beogradjanko mala” and noted that Merlin had released an album with war themes, then later filmed a Coca-Cola commercial in the middle of Ramadan.
Then a woman weighed in to defend Merlin, citing a line from Ceca’s own song as her argument.
“Well, Dino Merlin also wrote ‘my Belgrade, embrace me,’ your comparison is stupid,” she wrote.
The singer answered her herself, in a single sentence.
“I wrote those lyrics myself…,” Raznatovic wrote.
Comments piled up under the post reminding readers that she isn’t merely the performer of her own songs. Users pointed out that she also wrote the second verse of “Oprostajna vecera,” as well as part of “Pustite me da ga vidim.” As of this writing, Merlin had not responded publicly.
What Merlin Has Said About How the Song Came to Be
Merlin has spoken about “Beograd” more than once, and always the same way, with a precise location and year.
The song “Beograd” was written for Ceca Velickovic in Switzerland, in St. Gallen, one night in early ‘91, at the request of her partner at the time, Harun Samardzic. I wrote her three songs that night, and “Beograd” was one of them.
He has also explained why he almost never performs it at his own concerts. He doesn’t play songs he wrote for other artists, he has said, though he always adds the caveat that one should never say never.
Ceca Talked About the Song Before, Just Not the Lyrics
The singer has never been quiet about that collaboration. She has said the two met in Switzerland, where he wrote her “Zaboravi” and gave her “Beograd” as a gift, and that he also wrote “Zarila sam zar” for her elsewhere in her career. She has also said the song was originally written as a duet, with the male part meant to go: “I know the color of the dress, I’m the one who bought it, I know a certain pair of lips, I’m the one who kissed them.”
In an interview for K1 television, she explained why his name never appeared under the song.
Because of the whole situation, we weren’t allowed to credit him, and people only started talking about it publicly once things had calmed down. I never hid that. Later he talked about it himself too. But at the time I kept it quiet so he wouldn’t run into problems because of it, and I would never do that to someone who was that decent to me. We don’t talk, we don’t socialize, we haven’t even run into each other. I respect and value him enormously as an artist, and I’m grateful I have three songs like that in my career. “Beograd” is an evergreen.
In all of those earlier accounts, she talked about how she got the song and why the author wasn’t credited. She never said she had written any of the lyrics herself. The X post is the first time she has made that claim in public.
Do the Two Accounts of the Song Match?
Not entirely, and that was true even before this post. Merlin places the song’s origin at the start of 1991. The singer has previously said she received the song in 1992 and recorded it in 1995. That one year gap in the timeline has stood unresolved for years, and now it comes with an added question: who wrote which line.
What isn’t in dispute: the song originated as Merlin’s, it is credited to him, and he has spoken about it as his own work. The claim in the post concerns part of the lyrics, not the entire song.
A Song the Audience Still Plays
Interest in that catalog hasn’t faded. According to YouTube Charts data for the first half of 2026, Ceca Raznatovic’s songs were streamed 108.5 million times across six Balkan countries, making her the most streamed female artist in all of those markets.
By country:
- Serbia, 62 million streams
- Croatia, 14 million
- the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 11 million
- Republika Srpska, 10 million
- Montenegro, 7 million
- Slovenia, 4.5 million
She released her last studio album, “Autogram,” ten years ago. Even after 31 years, “Beograd” remains tied to both names, and since August 5 also to the question of who wrote which line.
