Russians at No 1? Da!Time of publication: 30.01.2003 |
Despite parading as under-dressed, sexually ambivalent teenagers, the 'hottest pop stars in the world' perform songs of surprising maturity. Lynsey Hanley heralds the arrival of Muscovite duo Tatu
On Sunday, at about 7pm, Britain will be conquered by Russians. Tatu are coming, and nothing less than a number-one single will do.
The teenage girl duo - taciturn, blonde Lena Katina, 17, and loud-mouthed 18-year-old brunette Julia Volkova - have already sold a million copies of their debut album, 200km/H in the Wrong Lane, in eastern Europe alone. Their first English-language single, All the Things She Said, has already hit top tens in both the Eurozone and the US; it is expected to top the British charts this weekend.
A planned visit to London last week for twin TV assaults on Top of the Pops and CD:UK was cancelled, apparently due to illness, but their absence will only provide both shows with another opportunity to run the video that has moved style bible The Face, in a gushing six-page love letter, to declare Tatu "the hottest pop stars in the world right now".
In the already notorious promo, Lena and Julia shiver in barely adequate school uniforms - now their trademark - behind a razor-wire fence, kissing each other passionately before running off in the direction of a grim Stalin-era housing project. With a video like that, the quality of the song is almost irrelevant, yet All the Things She Said is an impressively spiky, Trevor Horn-produced pop single, without a trace of an eastern European inferiority complex.
It's taken the decade or so since the crumpling of the iron curtain for any eastern European act to even attempt to succeed in the insanely competitive western pop market. Now Muscovite child psychologist turned pop svengali Ivan Shapovalov has launched Tatu with one of the most brazenly calculated publicity campaigns since Britney Spears bounced on to the cover of Rolling Stone wearing - what else? - a school uniform and clutching a Teletubby.
In recent days, British tabloids have tied themselves in knots trying to condemn Shapovalov's role in cultivating Tatu's notoriety, without acknowledging that it's just such publicity that a manager craves for his act. They may well accuse him of manipulation - as they would any male former advertising guru who so closely manages the image of his charges - but there's an air of authenticity about Volkova and Katina's closer-than-friends relationship that they confirm, however evasively, in interviews. In performance, they behave with a kind of rapturous tenderness towards each other that seems unforced.
Yet, despite the obvious and potentially deeply distasteful connotations of putting very young women in skimpy versions of a school uniform and getting them to kiss for the camera, t.A.T.u. seem nowhere near as bothered about accusations of pandering to male fantasies as Britney and arch-rival Christina Aguilera. Whereas the latter seem to seek approval for their latest attempts at being naked while clothed, Katina and Volkova appear supremely uninterested in whether anybody likes them. Perhaps it helps that they are Russian; as they say, "In Russia, life is not nice, so we are not nice."
Shapovalov formed Tatu two years ago. (The name is a Russian acronym for "This girl loves that girl".) It was exactly the right time, just as all points east of Berlin were becoming sufficiently westernised to make a globally successful eastern pop act a realistic proposition.
Thanks to the launch of MTV Russia and MTV Poland in the late Nineties, the stakes were raised for domestic talents who found themselves having to compete for airtime with the lavish production values of US pop videos. The fact that Russians now have a genuinely worldwide act they can call their own is the first step in the westward march of its pop culture. Rival performers are already considering whether to re-record their hits in English for release here and in the US.
Meanwhile, after Tatu's success with All the Things She Said, we can look forward to the release of their breakthrough Russian single, Not Gonna Get Us (the video for which features the girls driving a truck at dangerously high speeds through the wilds of Siberia), and perhaps even their cover version of the Smiths' most miserable hymn to adolescence, How Soon is Now?
If there's one thing you can guarantee, it's that you would never catch Britney or Christina doing either of those things. |
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