Tatu: Russian Teen Popsters' Kiss and Sell. ("Buenos Aires Herald" - US)

Time of publication: 19.03.2003

MOSCOW — Clad in skimpy tank tops, teenage pop stars Lena and Yulia giggle and clasp hands on a Russian television talk show as their hit music video is played for a studio audience.
The camera pans over the audience, lingering on a Russian Orthodox priest who grimaces and crosses himself when the video shows the girls kissing.
The pop duo Tatu — Russian slang for This girl (loves) that girl — has long been causing a sensation at home.
But now that the teenagers are also climbing charts around the world, their scanty schoolgirl uniforms, flirtations with lesbianism and in-your-face sexuality are prompting debate about whether this is the kind of cultural export the land of Tchaikovsky and Chekhov wants to become known for.
"Soft but flirtatious lesbian erotica direct on a hit video, and furthermore with underage participants — not even Madonna came up with that," music critic Dmitry Shavyrin wrote in the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets.
As a marketing tool, it clearly works, said Dmitry Konnov of Russia's MTV, whose viewers voted Tatu's I Lost My Mind, about young same-sex love, the No. 1 video in 2001.
The group's debut album, 200 km/hour in the Wrong Lane, has sold well over 1.1 million copies, and an estimated 4 million pirated copies. All the Things She Said — the English-language version of the Russian I Lost My Mind — is topping radio playlists from Colombia to Australia. Tatu is the first Russian band to reach No. 1 on Britain’s singles chart, and now they are taking on the US market.
This week, All the Things She Said climbed to No. 20 on the US Billboard chart.
But Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, both 18, aren't winning fans everywhere.
Britain's The Daily Mail said they have managed ban Tatu, whom critics have called "pedo-pop." In Bulgaria, officials canceled a Tatu concert that was scheduled for the eve of Pope John Paul II's visit last year, although officials denied a connection. "People love us or hate us but nobody thinks nothing about us," Lena says on Tatu's Web site.
Tatu was created in 1999 by a former child psychologist who acknowledges that he was trying to produce a sexy, provocative group led by teenage girls.

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