Lucie Bila

Among the most enduring and widely admired figures in Czech pop, Lucie Bílá entered the world as Hana Zanáková on April 7, 1966, in Otvovice. Her earliest professional steps took shape inside the bands Rock-Automat and Arakain until promoter, producer, and songwriter Petr Hannig encountered her in 1980. Hannig supplied the stage name to separate her from another performer already using Hana Zanáková and composed numerous early hits that launched her solo path. That path opened with the 1983 album Neposlusné Tenisky, the first in a string of releases whose popularity crested throughout the 1990s, when audiences and reviewers repeatedly voted her their preferred pop artist. In her native country she also built a parallel reputation on the musical-theater stage, appearing in productions such as Dracula, Romeo and Juliet, and Excalibur. A live set titled Koncert arrived in 2006; the following year Woman ascended to the summit of the album charts. Two further projects reached listeners in 2008: the studio album Moja a Páv and the live recording Lucerna.