Russian

Ivan Shapovalov Comments on Eurovision Results

Time of publication: 25.05.2003 (23:28)
The producer of the famous Russian duo Tatu doesn’t look at Julia and Lena’s result on Eurovision as a win/lose situation. "It’s neither this, nor that," he says, commenting on the results in an interview with InterMedia. "I take the result as reality. We didn’t go there to win the first place, although the outcome of victory was in mind. For us, it was self-sacrifice... God knows what for. We wanted to exchange part of our love, into votes for Russia, but it was not enough." Ivan doesn’t think, that cheating was involved in the counting of votes. Answering the question from InterMedia, why UK, where Tatu’s debut single topped the charts for 4 weeks, didn’t give the group any points at all, Shapovalov answered with a question: "Why didn’t they let us have a concert in Wembley? I don’t understand at all, how they voted in UK. But Eurovision’s results are taken as facts. Even if there was cheating, the results were fact. Everyone knows that this is not about the songs. This involves Europe’s money, political interests, religious ideas and moments. Because the pathetic music material that is used can’t possibly be uniting Europe. You can’t argue that Tatu’s performance stood out with different style, different format. "Eurovision" is a contest of wealthy Europe, where groups are like shows in casinos. I romantically hoped that we could beat the force of money by songs and feeling, it didn’t turn out that way." Nonetheless, Shapovalov thinks, that Tatu’s victory might have become reality, if they felt a more visible support of their country. "You can’t win this without financial support from Kremlin. It is clearly a political contest, in which Tatu would have gained 0 points, but they took home 164."
According to Shapovalov, Tatu’s performance on Eurovision was not better and not worse then usual. The organizers didn’t want, or couldn’t show Tatu in a more appealing way: "There wasn’t even one normal close up, the volume of the music was much lower then the other contestants had." Ivan thinks that this is caused by the fear of Tatu and their tricks. "This is all because of fear, but even these small factors didn’t stop us. Some other mechanisms of which I talked earlier helped us." Answering another question from InterMedia, why Tatu didn't do anything scandalous on the stage, Ivan explained as: "We wanted to win this honestly. We agreed to sacrifice our love for the votes to Russia, and so we did."
According to Ivan Shapovalov, after a few months the English version of “Ne Ver', Ne Boysya, Ne Prosi" will be released, and become a hit in Russia as well as in the West.

Source: TatySite.net (by InterMedia)
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