Djordje Pajovic: 'We've Been Guested Out of Tap 011'

Members of Tap 011 have responded publicly for the first time to Ivana Peters’ earlier comments about her split from the band, and they did it on the very evening of their own show at Belgrade club Nacionalna klasa. Djordje Pajovic told reporters the band hadn’t said much about their former bandmate’s departure because they didn’t want to tarnish 32 years of work together, but that the real story runs the other way.

“We haven’t said much precisely because we don’t want to tarnish something that lasted 32 years… we were left behind, we’ve basically been ‘guested out’.”

Peters left the group after three decades, and the spot beside Goca Trzan, Pajovic, Petar Stupar and Milan Bojanic is now filled by singer Ivana Vladovic. Ahead of the show, she joked about how she’d fit in with the group: “They welcomed me wonderfully, just as I welcomed them, we joke around, we tease each other.” Trzan added that a change had been overdue after so many years: “The four of us have two hundred years between us, easily… We needed some new energy, and then Ivana came along.”

Did Ivana Peters Reach Out to Her Former Bandmates?

According to the band, no. Petar says there has been no contact since Peters decided to go solo: “She hasn’t reached out, and that’s that… there’s no contact.” Trzan says there hasn’t been a single call since December 2025: “in every possible way, she never reached out to us again after December 2025. Not to any of us.” Still, the band insists there’s no ill will toward Peters. Trzan said Tap 011 has always been bigger than any two singers.

“It doesn’t surprise us. I think Tap 011 is much more than Goca and Ivana, Tap 011 is a vibe, an energy, above all what we ourselves carried.”

There is another side to this story, and Peters tells it differently. In an earlier interview for the Alter Ego podcast, published on June 16, she said the initiative to step back had been hers, but that she had only asked for a break, not an exit: “I asked for a break.” According to her, it was her bandmates who then dropped out of the shared Viber groups, leaving her without contact rather than the other way around. Peters further claims that while she spent a month performing solo, singing two songs from the Tap 011 catalogue, she received a message through management: she says the band’s manager contacted her producer demanding she stop performing those songs, with a lawsuit threatened. The band doesn’t confirm that version word for word, but does admit they asked her not to sing their songs, so as not to confuse audiences.

The two versions also diverge on who left whom. Peters says she never told her bandmates directly that she didn’t want to sing with them anymore, and that everything went through intermediaries instead. Pajovic confirms that as a sore point, but sees it from the opposite side.

“The only thing that bothers us is when Ivana gives interviews and talks in the first person… the girl never once in her life called us up and said she didn’t want to sing with us anymore… she signed off on us through her producer, and now she’s done the same thing to us through an intermediary.”

What They Said About the Split Before

This isn’t the first time band members have addressed the breakup. Back in April, in a statement to the Nova.rs portal, Pajovic said no one from the group had been kicked out, and Trzan said the same at the time, that Peters hadn’t been forced out of the lineup. The comments made this time, in front of a Belgrade audience, are the first to carry real emotion about the departure: Trzan says they were “shocked” watching the podcast where they felt, in her words, “put on the spot,” and stresses that no one has called them since December of last year.

Tap 011 continues performing under the same name, with Trzan and Vladovic on vocals, while Peters builds a solo career. The band hasn’t ruled out reconciling on a personal level. Unlike Pajovic, who thinks it would take years for the old dynamic to be restored, Petar said he’s ready to meet without conditions: “As far as I’m concerned, nothing needs to pass. She can call me for coffee, we sit down and everything’s fine.”

Telegraf’s report was published on September 12 at 12:45 AM, and the Elita.rs portal carried the statements the same day.