He said it in song. A song that moved and divided...
The first independent summary of the artistic career of Karel Gott (1939-2019) took a difficult path, as the singer meticulously arranged and conducted the legend of his persona. The leading music publicist Pavel Klusák was therefore sometimes forced to investigatively trace the singer's first steps from the workshops of ČKD to the stages of Prague's dance clubs, his excesses, his unfinished studies at the conservatory and his engagement at the Semafor theatre, which was the epicentre of the cultural revolt of the 1960s.
The analysis of the transformation of the promising star into a cantilena performer of ideologically benign hits also deals in detail with Gott's allegedly highly successful tour in Las Vegas and the circumstances of his "practice emigration" to Germany (1971), which - under the pragmatic supervision of the architects of his success - fundamentally influenced this transformation. However, in his lifelong pursuit of a non-conflicted, seemingly apolitical cult of personality, the forty-two-time winner of the Golden Nightingale People's Poll did not acknowledge that his attitudes were also significantly polarizing society.
This demystifying portrait of an artist whose national popularity reveals something unpleasant about ourselves was named Book of the Year at the 2022 Magnesia Litera Awards.