Putin Sings "Blueberry Hill" (no, really - not kidding)

What can I even say?

It's beyond the limits of the linguistic representation.  It can only be compared to similar experiential states, even those engendered via the visual.

Even the club mix is heinous.  Positively fetid.

I need to go take a shower.

Knife for Frau Müller

Known also as Нож для Фрау Мюллер, Нож для Frau Müller, or Messer für Frau Müller.  I know little about them, as their output is somewhat outside the genres/styles I'm generally researching - but I was first introduced to them by a friend in St. Petersburg, and immediately liked their work, a very original combination of electronica, retro/lounge, and cheese-core.  Their song "Лучшая девушка в СССР" ("Luchshaia devushka v SSSR"/"The Best Girl in the USSR"), from their 1999 album Алло, супермен! (Allo, supermen!/Hello, Superman!) actually had a video, and is one of my favorites:

I'm not entirely certain, but it could be that some of the illustrations are from Russian "ladies" magazines such as Работница (Rabotnitsa/Working Woman).

"Nostalgia" of all sorts is still an important element in post-Soviet popular culture; in a future post, I'll try to remember to talk the practice of remixing theme songs from popular Soviet films into dance mixes - including a very popular remix from the ultra-popular Soviet-era classic comedy Служебный роман (Sluzhebnyi roman/Office Romance).  Below, the protagonists:

Валерия / Valeriia

It's difficult to distill the very long career of Valeriia (stage name of Alla Perfilova) into just a few sentences and clips, so I make no claims to comprehensiveness.

I've been listening to Valeriia for over ten years, and she's been around (and successful) for far longer than that.  Coming to attention on the popular music landscape in the early 1990s, her original style (most certainly due to the creative input of her husband/manager/producer/composer Aleksandr Shul'gin) was somewhat "unique" in the context of what was then being played on Russian airwaves.  Divorce, retreat from the public eye and a temporary cessation of her career, personal revelations (Shul'gin had physically and emotionally abused her for years, detailed in many tabloids, talk shows, her autobiography, and a television film), an eventual re-marriage to manger/producer Iosif Prigozhin - and in the early 2000s she re-emerges, arguably more successful than ever.  Her personal/sartorial style had changed much since her early days (one of my most acerbic friends said she had morphed into the Russian Barbie), as did her musical style, which moved toward one clearly geared toward mainstream pop success.  Here, a couple of clips from her early days:

"Самолёт"/"Samolet"/"Airplane"

(Can't resist comparing the visuals to this - which came out about 10 years earlier.  And there's never a bad time to link to 80s "new wave" pop):

Another clip from the same era as "Airplane" - clearly attempting to construct a "gritty," "alternative" visual/acoustic style:

"С добрым утром"/"S dobrym utrom"/"Good Morning"

The following clips are from her post-divorce, post-Shul'gin phase:

"Была любовь"/"Byla liubov'"/"It Was Love"
This is clearly an autobiographical song about her "release" from Shul'gin's "golden cage"

Here, another track from the same album, which I find horribly catchy; I admit, Valeriia's super-slick populist pop from this era (and following) is one of my guilty Russian pop pleasures:

"Маленький самолёт"/"Malen'kii samolet"/"Little Airplane"
(Ah, the airplane theme - and I'm guessing it's no coincidence that this video uses animation as well)

That sliding synth hook is kind of brilliant - hook, indeed.  But look - the utter blondness of it all!  The hair extensions!  The euro fashion!  And the secret is out - she is just about the most physically awkward singer of the last 320 years.  Much of the time, she looks somewhat deranged.

Around 2008, there's a not entirely successful attempt to break into the English-speaking market (although note that her first album, The Taiga Symphony was in English) and international superstardom - she releases the album Неподконтрольно/Nepodkontrol'no in both Russian and English versions (Out of Control).  From this album:

"Wild" (Russian version:  "Боль"/"Bol''/"Pain"; the subtitle of the Russian is "Schast'e na chasti" ["happiness in pieces"], so the video doesn't make much visual sense in relation to the English version, which does not retain this reference).  Another catchy song with great production - but didn't make many waves in the UK or US (although she was on the cover of Billboard).

Another:

"The Party's Over."  Apologies for essentializing, but there's a clear attempt in this one to court a "gay" audience (shirtless, swarthy hunks, retro-kitsch aesthetics, intimations of lady-lady luv), and it's obviously no coincidence that her western PR people were trying to sell her as "the Russian Madonna" - an appellation at which Valeriia herself balked.  I'll return to that shortly, and move to the present day with one of her latest songs/clips:

"Ты моя"/"Ty moia"/"You Are Mine"
A duet with real-life daughter Anna Shul'gina (now a television host, and - well, I just can't bring myself to call her a "singer," not even with supersize scare quotes), rife with every trope of domesticity and "family values" - those "values" so dear to so many in Russia these days, and an idea with which so many so often construct themselves as "different from the west."  Before getting to some unpleasantness, some humor:

Screen grab; inhumanly "blue" eyes:

Second child from the left; a stunning resemblance:

Valeriia's use of "family values" seems, however, to go beyond her musical output, appears to indicate the singer's personal "moral" code.  In 2013, I was happy to see that she had - along with scores of others from the Russian giltterati - signed a letter, addressed to President Putin, protesting St. Petersburg's passing of an anti-gay propaganda law (prior to the passage of the national legislation).  The move engendered an apparent backlash from her fans, and in the press, and the singer made an awkward attempt (clearly her verbal skills are as challenged as her kinetic/corporeal) to have it both ways, stating (in letters to the press) that of course she was against homosexual propaganda, and of course she was a good Orthodox Russian, and she was not against the law itself, but only against one of the statute's main architects/supporters, Vitalii Milonov, and his attempts to use the political process for personal self-aggrandizement.  

But then, in 2014, this disturbing appearance on the BBC, with recently-fired television host Anton Krasovskii (fired after he came out on national television):

The inability to differentiate between homosexuality and pedophilia is only one example of her stunning ignorance - yet sadly, according to several polls by VTsIOM and other pollsters, she is correct in stating that a majority of the Russian populace agrees with her support for this legislation.  Just don't ask, don't tell, be a "normal person," and you'll get along fine with Valeriia.  You can even be a dancing boy in one of her videos:

(Good for her for making this video a thinly-veiled plug for Westfalika, the Russian online retailer for which she is the celebrity spokesperson.  But really, while it may be impossible to be too rich or too thin, some things are best used in moderation.)

And here she is, at one of her megaconcerts (a birthday concert, to be exact), with "heterosexual" singer Nikolai Baskov (Russia's answer to Andrea Bocelli).  

I won't make any insintuations about Baskov's sexual orientation, because the Russian press does this on a regular basis.  Some "journalists," however, are wont to enumerate Baskov's various "loves" and "sexual conquests"; all these can probably be summed up in one word.

I will also point out that Valeriia's daughter (above) has said that her dream husband would be Baskov.  (Please god, please - let her follow in the footsteps of Mary Cheney).

[And regarding Baskov, as related to larger questions of popular culture and popular music in Russia:  this performance with Valeriia, including his rendition of "Happy Birthday" at the end, is a perfect example not only of the aesthetic of "Russian excess," but also of the longtime practice of attempting to blend the "high" with the "mass" (culture) - one of the main aims of the Soviet period and beyond.  Along the same lines, here is an utterly brilliant piece of "huh??!  what the..???!!" combining Baskov, Radio DJs/song parodists Murzilki International, and Albinoni.  Deliciously horrifying - and not only the haircut.]

K A Z A K Y

Greetings, Gentlefemmes.

In the beginning...

"In the Middle"
Their first video.  I love the way we move from a Disney version of "street style" to BDSM-couture and stilettos (a progression of ever more queerness); the way that the voices don't align consistently with the faces; the way that the one-note melody of the main vocal hook ("in the middle") is at odds with the implied harmonic foundation (a perfect fourth above the tonic); the brilliant sample of the gasping voice that is blended into a synth hook, as well as the sharp inhalations/exhalations that become part of the rhythm track.  After several years, they're still out there, and have released two "albums."

"Crazy Law"
[Trivia:  the clip was shot in the now-abandoned Murru Prison, a Soviet-era prison/labor camp in northern Estonia.]

Yes, they're not Russian (they're Ukrainian, although I believe Artur was born in Armenia) - but that hasn't stopped them from commenting (not so) obliquely on Russian legislation.  Who knew that electroclash/synthcore/neo-new-wave could be so socially committed?

(Neo-new-wave indeed; I can't listen to the vocals of the "chorus" without hearing this.  Hurrah, another excuse to invoke the 80s.)

(And for fun - try to figure out the vaguely unintelligible lyrics.  Others have tried - with humorous consequences.)

It's not just that they are so visually delicious (although they are sure to make men as insecure about their bodies as the beauty "industry" and male scopophilia have done to women for decades centuries), or that they are stunning examples of so many post-s (-modern, -human, -gender, -Soviet) - many of their songs are actually quite good (thanks in part to their slick, sick production).  I originally assumed they were simply dancers lip-synching to tracks laid down and composed by other musicians/vocalists, but turns out that two of the members - Artur and Kirill - are responsible for most of the songwriting, and that they and Oleg provide most of the vocals.

Of the original four - Oleg, Stas, Kirill, Artur - three were gay, one was straight, and two were lovers.  All are (obviously) trained dancers.  Oleg, the main choreographer, is apparently still associated with the group, but doesn't perform in their new videos; Stas has left for the second time, and has been replaced with Artemii, so the quartet - for now- has become a trio.

"What You Gonna Do"
Hot track, and really gorgeous video (which, as always, makes me think of "you and you and Gareth Pugh").

How about a smackdown with these guys?