Transcribed by Echoed.
TatySite.Net
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Extreme Pop. Girl on Girl.
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Forget Britney's lapdancer moves and fake orgasms...
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The hottest popstars in the world right now are Tatu. They're Russian. They're teenagers. And they appear to be lesbians.
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It's an overcast day on the beach in Barcelona. In the shadow of the towering Hotel Artes, where guests for this week's MTV awards are just arriving, THE FACE is conducting a photo shoot.
On all fours on the sand is Julia Volkova, one half of Russian pop duo Tatu. Although Julia is 18 (These people and their age differentiation problems. Hee. -Echo), she has the sub-five-feet body of a 12-year-old -- an impression that is enhanced by the fact that today, like most days, she's wearing a skimpy schoolgirl outfit comprising a white shirt, tie and mini-kilt. Wrapped around her face and neck is a bright-pink bondage tape, forming a collar and a lead. The other end of the lead is held by Julia's partner Lena, clad in -->
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identical school uniform. Lena stands and watches impassively as the bound and gagged Julia strikes a series of doggy-style poses for the camera.
Then a gust of wind catches Julia's kilt and flips it up around her waist, revealing her white cotton panties to the small crowd of Spanish workmen who have been gathering to watch. But posing dutifully, Julia doesn't move... until Lena leans forward and gently pulls her partner's skirt back down to cover her.
This is the life that Tatu have chosen for themselves -- gaining pop success by selling a distinctly paedophile-friendly sexuality, with a lesbian twist. Their hot'n'heavy schoolgirl video for the English-language debut single 'All The Things She Said' has created a global media storm which must be in equal measure thrilling and terrifying for them. But in the midst of the chaos which they have created for themselves, they are always there for each other.
Western culture in the grip of a youth fetish. We worship youth, and particularly young women, in a way that borders on the obsessive. The standards of beauty for women are based on teenage body shape. If someone like Kylie Minogue can pull off the trick of being in her thirties but having the arse of a teenager, she will be the object of fascination, awe and jealousy. Nobody questions whether wanting grown women to have bodies like girls is actually that healthy.
The crudest expression of our teen fixation has been the rise and rise of the schoolgirl outfit.
The biggest club phenomenon of the last few years has been School Disco, a piss-poor knees-up to old Eighties hits that has one stupendously effective gimmick -- the girls who go there dress up as schoolgirls. Then of course there's Britney Spears. Ground Zero for the Britney explosion was the first minute of the '... Baby One More Time' video, where she ground her hips in her schoolgirl kit, shirt tied in classic Lolita style over her navel.
Ever since then, poor Britney has been trying to recreate the buzz of those few seconds. But no matter how hard she pants, how extreme the hooker outfits she bravely squeezes into, or how lustily she throws herself into her lapdancer routines... she'll never be able to press those buttons again.
But Tatu have pulled it off. Their take on the schoolgirl thing is a simple twist, and it has taken their careers from nothing to thermonuclear. Like Britney, their debut video sees them in schoolgirl dress. But they don't just dance... they smooch each other in the throes of teenage lesbian lust. And it's a powerfully erotic performance. Instead of the pouting, fuck-me eye contact favoured by Britney, Tatu's video is an image of youth consumed by itself. The girls are not performing for the camera -- they're lost in each other.
The result, needless to say, has been millions and millions of sales.
Tatu are in Barcelona for the MTV Europe awards where they're due to perform and present an award. Given MTV's domination of the Russian youth psyche, this is a huge moment for them -- the first Russian pop act to gain entrance into the Death Star of Western cultural imperialism.
They owe it all to a man called Ivan Shapovalov. His career arc is a wonderful -->
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sign of entrepreneurial melting pot that is 21st-century Russia. Ivan graduated from Saratov Medical School in 1988 with a degree in psychology, and became a child psychologist. From this he jumped into advertising, before finally deciding that he wanted to direct a pop video. He recruited Tatu specifically for this project -- and the teen-lesbian epic was his very first project.
Lena and Julia's path was equally idiosyncratic. They had both studied at a Moscow music school, receiving a rigorous training in classical piano and music theory. But eight years of classical training went out the window when they saw a flyer posted in the school requesting auditions for a teen band called Nesopredi.
At this point the story becomes murky. If you believe that the girls are genuinely lesbians, then you'll accept the version the way the girls tell it, that Ivan spotted their Sapphic tendencies and formed a band around them -- 'Ivan wanted to take our life and put it on screens,' claims Lena.
Of course, it's easier to be cynical and believe that the whole thing is a marketing stunt hatched by a child psychologist who knows how to push people's buttons.
We hook up with them the day before a photoshoot. After exchanging strangely formal handshakes with the tiny pair, we take them up to our hotel suite, where photographer, stylist, hair and make-up people are all waiting.
We've travelled to Barcelona with a vast black trunk of clothes, which have now been unpacked into a series of piles of skirts, vests, pants and dresses. There's everything from Diesel and Miss Sixty to Chanel and McQueen. It is, in short, any teenage girl's dream.
Well, nearly. 'This is shit,' says Lena, in a tone of Russian your-papers-are-not-in-order doom. 'We will wear our uniforms.'
We try to explain to them to try out something different, but they're not budging. 'It is our image,' they insist repeatedly. Gradually it becomes clear -- they are not in this for fun or self-expression. This is serious, they see their success as something that can only be achieved if they doggedly put on those schoolgirl outfits and do their thing. Needless to say, they're right.
Lena and Julia to wed, underwater!
Lena Katina and Julia Volkova will go to incorporate a legal marriage. This is a very unusual event for Russia, which is why this event is going to happen in Holland. The wedding will be at the bottom of a pool. They are rehearsing the process -- study to drink champagne under water and to put on rings.
From Russian pop site www.ntvru.com
Tatu are very different to UK teen bands. Our celebrity and teen media constantly tells kids that to be famous is to be in paradise -- and so when newly minted teen popstars find the life is actually an endless slog of promotions, press, PAs and meet-and-greets, they get hit by a massive wave of disillusionment. They boyband Five threw in the towel straight after achieving a Number One record. One of the S Club 7 walked out, muttering that he was going to form a heavy metal band. Tatu display the kind of dedication that you might expect from astronauts. They're exploring, they've got a job to do, and nothing will stop them.
With more and more globalised entertainment media, being famous gets harder every year. Perhaps a new breed of super-dedicated stars from Eastern Europe will take over pop, like they've done with modelling.
Tatu need their dedication, because they're now playing in the big league. Ivan Shapovalov's inspired video caught the attention of LA-based ьber-label Interscope, home to Eminem, Dre and Marilyn Manson.
The label put the girls in the studio with legendary UK producer Trevor Horn -- the man behind Frankie Goes To Hollywood -- to record English-language versions of their songs. Eighteen years after using male homosexuality to generate heat around 'Relax', Trevor has gone lesbian and hit gold again with his production of Tatu's 'All The Things She Said'.
'I liked the original Russian,' he says on the phone from his Sarm studios base in London. 'They reminded me a lot of Propaganda. And Ivan is like a young Andrew Loog-Oldham.' As for the lesbian thing, Trevor agrees that it's 'undeniably erotic'. 'As my daughter said, they'll snog their way around Europe,' he adds.
Elton John wants to adopt Tatu!
Elton John has gone mad under the charm of the Tatu girls. And it has got so serious that he has decided to adopt both girls at once! He already sent letters to each of the girls' family, in which he said that he offers 100 million dollars to receive the rights to take care of the girls as daughters. According to the latest news, neither Lena nor Julia's parents were able to reject such a generous offer. The girls are not against it either, as having such a famous singer as their 'dad' would open to them all the gates of show business.
From Tatu fansite www.tatysite.net
After another session of photos on the hotel balcony, Julia comes back inside and sits on the sofa opposite me. She extracts a Vogue cigarette from its slimline case and lights up. With her legs crossed, one arm propping herself on the sofa, the other cradling the cigarette, she exhales smoke and stares grimly into the middle distance. The transformation is incredible -- suddenly she is no longer the cute teen who arrived for the shoot wearing hipster jeans and holding hands with Lena, but an adult, a Russian woman taking a well-earned break from a job.
Over the next fortnight the girls will be working in Spain, Finland, Sweden and France. And then tour Poland. And then do promotion throughout the US and Mexico. And then back to Europe in January.
The song is continuing to blow up. Partly because of the video, but also because it's a great song, and because underneath the lesbian thing, there's something very real about these girls. Pop music has recently had its mystique blown by TV shows like Popstars and Pop Idol. Suddenly the kids can look at S Club and Westlife and understand exactly how they were manufactured.
That's not the case with Tatu. They have a genuine sense of mystery, and not just that surrounding their sexuality. There's something hard and alternative about these. A sense that, despite their ruthless determination to succeed, on some level they don't give a fuck. In an age of eager-to-please Andrex puppies like Gareth Gates, it's a very attractive quality.
I must confess, I never believed they were lesbians.
I mean, the whole schoolgirl-kissing thing is so perfectly manipulative, so brilliantly conceived to push buttons in our post-Britney haze, that it could only be the product of a child psychologist-cum-ad executive who had a great idea about making a controversial video.
Naturally, the girls straight-bat the subject in interviews, muttering mysteriously about certain things being private as any well-trained pseudo lesbian would do. And the fact that they hold hands a lot of the time? Well, it could either be part of the artifice, or just a natural reaction to being thrust into the weird fishbowl of international fame. Lesbian love? Yeah, right.
So it was quite a surprise, when we went back to the girls' hotel for them to change between shots. In their room, with sheets rumpled, was a lone double bed...
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