All The Things They Said ("Bang" - UK)Time of publication: 29.03.2003 |
ALL THE THINGS THEY SAID
At the tender age of 18, Russian dyke-pop minxes t.A.T.u. have already caused a storm of moral outrage and made one truly classic pop single. Steven Wells argues that 'All The Things She Said' is a revolutionary punk record and Nat Ivy speaks to Lena and Julia themselves (well, mostly Lena)
t.A.T.u.'s 'All The Things She Said' is the greatest teen angst anthem since Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirt'. A beautiful, powerful and unanswerable roar of defiance--right in the screwed-up, hate-twisted face of Middle England.
Ah. Yes. But. Those nagging questions. Are they really lesbians? Isn't the evil male manager a svengali-like manipulator of teenage flesh? And isn't this all just the cynical use of sexuality to sell records?
To all these questions there is, of course, only one sensible answer: shut-up, you boring, boring bastards. Was Johnny Rotten really the antichrist? Was beautiful Richey Manic ever plugged in? And did Kurt Cobain buy his guitar-strings from an evil capitalist guitar-string shop, or did he weave them himself out of moonbeams and fairy dust? It just doesn't matter.
As for the charge that the sinister masterminds behind t.A.T.u. are using sexuality to sell records, heck, let's burn at the stake every beautiful boy or handsome girl who has ever stirred our sex organs. t.A.T.u. are as sexy as fuck. What really matters is that sometimes pop music vomits up a work of art that is simultaneously beautiful, powerful, controversial, political and massively popular. And 'All The Things She Said' is just such a work of art.
At a time when the nation is consumed with a ferocious witch hunt against paedophiles-in-pop, t.A.T.u. come along with a fantastic, wonderfully-observed record about teenage lesbianism. Complete with a video featuring two rain-drenched schoolgirls snogging.
Bear this in mind also, the word "gay" is now firmly established in teen-slang as the accepted shorthand for everything weak, loathsome, ineffectual and naff. Try being a gay kid in the playground.
And then, suddenly, right there on Top Of The Pops, are two girls turning the world upside down. With a song about same-sex love more powerful than all the thousands of heterosexual love songs around at the same time. And how does the teenage record-buying respond? With disgust? With hatred? With loathing? Nah! They go out and buy it in their millions.
And that's why I don't care if the rest of the t.A.T.u. album is crap (it isn't). Or if--having titillated us all to the point of indifference--they immediately disappear right off the pop radar screen. Because t.A.T.u. have made pop which has both changed history and seriously fucked with the heads of reactionaries everywhere. Compared to that, the sad bitching of indie miserabilists and the crazed ranting of homophobic moralists are just so much annoying background static.
Thanks to Yaster for the article. |
 |
| Return to "Articles" |
