Russian Pop From A to Я: A Youtube Primer Thread

Thanks Ljubljana! I'll have to look for more stuff by them.

I mentioned that i had probably missed some of my favourites and have just realised i didn't mention N.A.T.O earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc_eT27vrSc

N.A.T.O was Ivan Shapovalov's first major post-Tatu project and a fairly good example of why, if he isn't the worst opportunist in Russian pop, he comes fairly close. Her identity was a mystery - she was a veiled woman singing Central Asian folk songs over electro beats - but nobody was even really sure which part of the region she was from. Journalists immediately accused her, and Shapovalov, of glorifying Chechen / Ingush "Black Widows" - the wives of rebels killed in the war who were detonating suicide bombs on the metro and at rock concerts fairly frequently at the time. Shapovalov responded by delivering a blistering j'accuse to the press about how shameful it was that an innocent woman who happened to wear traditional Muslim dress was being singled out by racists in the media. Which would have been fine had it not been for a couple of minor issues like:

1. Shapovalov scheduling her first concert for the 11th of September.
2. Shapovalov printing airline-shaped tickets for said concert
3. Shapovalov having her flanked by balaclava-clad men with replica Kalashnikovs whenever she was seen in public

Which is obviously terrible. Her calling card Chorjavon is one of the most extraordinary things i've ever heard though. An updated version of a traditional Tajik song about four doomed brothers going hunting (implicitly in this case, for Russian soldiers) in the mountains, it's an astonishing, propulsive thing that serves as a reminder that, for all his manifest awfulness, her manager knew what he was doing sometimes.

Thank so much for this thread. I put Serebro on my year-end list last year and have been eagerly awaiting Nyusha, so I'm in your target audience here.

If anyone's interested, I've been putting together a spotty (no pun intended) Spotify playlist with this stuff as it's shared, put in a vaguely listenable/mix order. Most of it is available on Spotify. I've gotten to about M so far. Best discovery is that Sergei Lazarev has a collab with T-Pain (it's not very good). Will gladly share editing with anyone who wants to add to it since I literally know nothing about this.

http://open.spotify.com/user/cureforbedbugs/playlist/0bH1fln1y3xAsvS08Muf9i

Awesome! Thank you for the Spotify list!

Ruslana also has a song with T-Pain. It's also not very good.

I'll be away in Ireland for a few days but will aim to polish off the rest of the alphabet next week.

My silly favorite has always been Ivanushki International.

"Tuchi"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5Z9-4JV99c

давай!

Руки Вверх! (Ruki Vverh! / Hands Up!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDbMeMmyKJQ

One of the great techno-pop groups of the late 1990s, Руки Вверх! were incredibly effective at combining downbeat, emotive lyrics with party-centred Eurodance. They had a small amount of success in Germany but their biggest impact outside of Russia came when ATC covered песенка (Pesenka) as the million-selling Around The World (La La La La La). The video for Он тебя целует (On Tebya Tseluyet / He Kisses You) is still played frequently on Russian music TV stations and has a rather sweet gay / trans theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkx8iqCuscc

Руслана (Ruslana)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clez6WRY7lQ

Ге-е-ей, серце моє!

Eurovision winner, orange revolutionary, member of parliament and Ukrainian national icon, Ruslana's career would have been extraordinary even if the music hadn't been as wonderful as it was. From the defiantly nationalistic West of the country, she combined contemporary pop with elements of the Hutsul mountain people's folk music superbly. Коломийка (Kolomyika) is one of the last decades most joyful singles - there was so much bouncing when she played it live in Kiev's central square during the celebrations to mark Ukraine's 15th year of independence i thought we were all going to crash through into the subterranean mall underneath.

Reflex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzxYPtR5IpM

Reflex might have made off-the-peg breathy dance pop but in their fourteen years of popularity they've had quite a few excellent singles, most notably 2004's Non-Stop. They were moderately popular in Germany for a while, particularly with the tabloid Bild (which i'm sure had nothing to do with the fact they were led by two beautiful blondes who occasionally posed for Russian Playboy).

Ранетки (Ranetki)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uY-goxZ-tc

Avril Lavigne was as huge an influence on Russian teens as
those in the rest of Europe, with a wave of female-led pop-rock groups appearing in her wake. Although not dissimilar in style to a lot of their contemporaries, Ранетки are unique in having their own long-running soap opera series on TV. I'm not sure they've ever bettered the excellent early single О тебе (About You).

С is for Серебро (Serebro / Silver)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfXpeK25niw

Nyusha might be getting the critical attention but, when it comes to overseas interest, it's Серебро making the money. Popular in Russia since 2006, their big international break didn't really come until 2011's Мама Люба (Mama Lyuba). The video (in the first post of the thread) was one of the most simple and memorable of recent years. Although nothing more than the girls mucking about in a car and miming to the single, the prevalence of dashboard cameras in Russian vehicles meant it was incredibly easy to parody. Within months there were dozens on Youtube - including a rather cute one made by a bunch of gruff Turkish dudes. It went on to chart everywhere from Poland to Belgium. Curiously, recent single Мальчик (Malchik / Boy), which relocated the mucking about to a plane, bombed in Russia but spent weeks at No.1 in Italy when re-released as Gun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6C9x0uK86I

Stereoliza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFcLclftVpw

Екатерина Шалаева (Ekaterina Shalaeva) was, for an album at least, one of the strangest and most entertaining pop stars Ukraine had to offer. After an early attempt at a rock opera / concept piece failed to get anywhere she reinvented herself as an Eminem-inspired English-language rapper - not letting the fact that she couldn't really rap get in the way. The end result, X-amine Your Zippa, was closer to P!nk in spirit and blended some terrific pop songs with a delightfully idiosyncratic use of language that encompassed some rather obscure British idioms ("bonk", "whizz", etc) with a rather more basic sense of grammar. Rough is probably my favourite song on the album but Corporate Logic is close. She was very successful in Ukraine and Poland but couldn't agree the financing for an ambitious second album and emigrated to the US shortly afterwards. She's still making music there.

Sorry for the delay, i shouldn't have started watching Law & Order on Netflix.

Anyway, i should definitely have mentioned Ю́лия Са́вичева (Yulia Savicheva) in the С section.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGGLWxReJrE

One of the first big stars discovered through the Фабрика звёзд (Fabrika Zvyozd / Star Factory) talent show, Yulia has been consistently popular for a decade. Although she's usually not quite as punchy and dramatic as some of her rivals, she does have an appealing sincerity and a lot of very good songs. Если в сердце живёт любовь (Esli V Serdtse Zhivut Lyubov' / If Love Lives In The Heart) was an early highlight. 2006's магнит (Magnit) album was also excellent.

Т is for Тату́ (Tatu)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYTO4piTi48

Тату́ hardly require an introduction but i couldn't leave out one of the greatest pop groups in history. They might have been formed by a shady, exploitative manager but they'll sit forever in the pantheon of truly great rebel bands. Debut 200 По Встречной (200 Po Vstrechnoy / 200 km/h Against The Traffic) was promoted in a crass, salacious manner but strip that away and you have an album about defiance and escape as powerful as any i can recall. It's would have been easy to ascribe their brilliance to Ivan Shapovalov's music and Elena Kiper's lyrics but neither was involved in their second, equally superb, effort Люди Инвалиды (Lyudi Invalidi / Disabled People) - although, rather oddly, Dave Stewart, Sting and Richard Carpenter were. The real key was always the interplay between Lena and Yulia's emotive vocals. They're still recording separately - Lena making decent, overblown gothic pop and Yulia making disappointing electro.

тема (Tema / Topic)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxoeAv3TTBA

тема were the bootleg Тату́. As the name of their album Просто Я Фанатка (Prosto Ya Fanatka / I'm Just A Fan) suggested, there was never really any attempt to pretend that they weren't, in effect, a tribute act designed to look and sound exactly like their idols. They kind of pulled it off on occasion, too. радиация (Radiatsiya / Radiation) is great.

You may be interested in this
http://farfrommoscow.bandcamp.com/
http://www.farfrommoscow.com/

Yes! It's a really cool site. The guy who runs it messaged me on VK after i did a piece on Russian pop for the Guardian a while back. He's great.

That's great, did he talk about any purpose that project is working towards beyond the obvious? I mean I've found a ton of great tracks browsing through those compilations these past few years and it's barely been publicised.

Not that my interest means much outside itself but it seems like the kind of thing that music bloggers go gaga for.

He's an academic at UCLA's school of Slavonic studies, iirc. Russian pop culture is his specialism and this is a way to get some of the stuff at the margins out to a wider audience.

Yeah gathered that much, just feel it could be reaching a much wider audience.

Should probably have mentioned rapper Ти́мати (Timati) in passing. The self-style "Black Star" isn't particularly good but he'

s very popular and has the money to bring in collaborators like Snoop, P. Diddy, Busta, etc.

Anyway, давай!

У is for Ульи (Ul'i / Hives)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGUoADT32-o

Only ever moderately popular but still well regarded in Russia's alternative rock circles, Ульи have been going since the late 90s with a mixture of indie, punk and bardic influences.

Ф is for Фабрика (Fabrika / Factory)

For unwavering quality over the course of the last decade, i'm not sure there's a pop group in Russia that can match Фабрика. That said, they haven't overly taxed themselves with only two albums (both classics) since they finished in second place on 2003's edition of Фабрика звёзд. Although most of their songs are upbeat modern pop, they're unusual in incorporating influences from Soviet-era musicals at times as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf8uUYxSwXM

Damn it, there was meant to be more Fabrika:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qNkRsla1L4

Жанна Фриске (Zhanna Friske)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAdljwQANM

Best known in the west as Alice from the Night Watch films, Фриске has been a huge star as a singer, actress and general it-girl since her days in girl-group Блестящие. She usually sticks to bubbly reggae-tinged pop like her delightful eponymous single from 2008 - a song that bears more than a passing resemblance to her US counterpart's Stars Are Blind.

Митя Фомин (Mitya Fomin)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vem__5si6Us

Former lead singer of the entertaining Hi-Fi, Фомин took his brand of camp electro-pop solo a couple of years ago with great success. He drafted in the Pet Shop Boys for Огни большого города (City Lights), a reinterpretation of Paninero, and scored one of his biggest hits to date.

Ц is for Центр (Tsentr / Centre)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cELuIu_toZM

I haven't posted much Russian rap music, largely because not much of it is any good. Domestic hip-hop is very popular though - it used to take up as much space as Russian rock in record shops, back in the days when there were still record shops to take up space in. Центр are fairly typical - nothing special, quite dated from an international perspective, but definitely listenable.

Ч is for Чика из Перми (Chika Iz Permi / Chick From Perm)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK0xcXDMmV8

"Мои пророки - это нации клубов, Диджеи, геи и Паша Дуров"

With no official singles or albums, Чика из Перми exist pretty much exclusively through occasional Youtube clips and club appearances but they're probably my favourite Russian pop group in a decade. As far as i can tell, they were initially formed when the lead singer, Alice, asked one of her friends to help her record an electro-pop song to promote the sushi bar she's a waitress at. The excellent Роллы (Rolls) was the result. With a variety of different women fronting the videos, most of the songs are semi-affectionate, semi-vicious parodies of Permian party girls and their home town's culture of weekend nihilism. The closest they've come to crossover success was causing a minor moral panic with я каждый день бухаю, a cover of a punk song about youth alcoholism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJpP3fp4uvE

Катя Чехова (Katya Chekhova)

The recent Nyusha material, with more of a trance / house feel than the R'n'B pop of her debut, reminds me a little of Катя Чехова at times. There's a similar combination of dancefloor focus and a strange sense of detachment. Крылья (Wings) is particularly good. idek what's going on with the dancers in the clip above.

чичерина (Chicherina)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VattDdtdafQ

One of the best pop-rock stars to break through in the late 90s / early 00s Yulia Chicherina's debut album Сны (Dreams) still stands up really well today.

Katya Chilly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9M_rqFEzv0

'Electro versions of traditional Ukrainian folks songs' doesn't necessarily sound like a winning concept but in the hands of Katya Chilly something that could have sounded quite crass and gimmicky becomes absolutely remarkable. Her 2006 album я молодая (Ya Molodaya / I'm Young) is a classic.

Katya Chekhova video was missing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLFx-oVw8YQ

golden thread

I remember bits of it from first time around but was led back to it from the recent wave of Vitas' '7th Element' from 2001 slowly randomly going viral again due to its complete brilliance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWmfNeLs7fA

the Tim & Eric "Angel Boy" sketch has got to be based off Vitas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXALdmL7FeU