Jelena Karleuša was born in Belgrade, Serbia, to father Dragan (born 1 January 1947 in Belgrade), a senior police officer, and mother Divna (born 25 January 1957 in Slovenia). Her maternal grandfather Jurij was from Ptuj, Slovenia, a military pilot, and her maternal grandmother Darinka (died 2004) was from Doboj, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A maternal great-great-grandmother of hers was of aristocratic background and married a working class Montenegrin. Karleuša was born and raised in the Fontana neighborhood of New Belgrade. She began her singing career as a turbo-folksinger in the mid-90s and gained popularity with her debut album, Ogledalce (1995), selling more than 10,000 copies in Yugoslavia. Later on, as her career progressed, she tried to veer towards pop music exclusively, although her style of singing and the type of songs she has been singing has remained strongly within the field of turbo-folk genre. She has since had several #1 hits, most of which were written by Marina Tucaković.