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Underground > Radio & Music >

So T.a.t.u. then?

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03:13 / 03.02.03

No, but did you see the two guys pashing in Xtina's new video ("Beautiful", not "Dirrty")?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:09 / 03.02.03

This is London's particular take

BBC chiefs are meeting today to decide whether Tatu's video for All The Things She Said can be shown on Top of the Pops later this week. ITV chart show CD:UK has already banned the video following criticism of raunchy performances on the children's programme by US singer Christina Aguilera.

CD:UK producer Tammy Hoyle said: "We could not show the video on CD:UK because it is not really suitable for children. We did screen a performance by Tatu recorded last year in Europe and we cut their kiss at the end."

Whereas I'm fairly sure that Eastenders, Corrie, Brookie and Hollyoaks have all had gay/lesbian storylines in their time. And, as I'm sure has been pointed out already, TotP and CD:UK routinely screen much more explicit videos almost everytime they show an R&B video.

09:25 / 03.02.03

True, ut in those storylines they had the time to show all the moral considerations of homosexual activities. Like being ostracised by yr peers, and the fact that, by being gay, you'll never get a good story line again (presumably. Having only watch EastEnders not really being able to care about that).

On TOTP, you'd never be able to show all the moral and ethical issues rasied by such a caryying on, and it would, esentially, be brought up to the same level as hetrosexual activities. Which it clearly isn't on absolutly any level. God no, not at all...

Atleast CD:UK appear to be sticking to their guns, and not taking the "two women good, two men bad" line which a room full of old men in suits is probablly quite prone to (they probablly watched the whole fucking thing first tho. Slowly, and in great detail. A lot. You know, just to be sure... ). I mean, it's a crap gun they're sticking to, but they're sticking to it, so that's something.

09:28 / 03.02.03

Erm, wait. Having NOW read the article, the last paragraph is based on a bizarre assumption that everyone is discussing wether or not to show the Beautiful video). And not really based on anything that has either A: been said before, or B: even factually correct.

Sorry.

10:08 / 03.02.03

TATU's Julia and Lena are both over 16 - and look it. Especially Lena whose ..erm attributes are definitely un-childlike. I suspect that the real criticism is the homosexual angle, but that's a tougher thing to criticise these days, thankfully - as RAW might say: we're finally escaping from the Planet Of The Apes.

But 'paedophilia' is the new 'drugs' - i.e. the latest terror word used in the same context as the billboards in the film They Live: STAY ASLEEP

Anyway, paedophiles aren't going to buy TATU records when they can buy S CLUB JUNIORS CD's. Quick! Tell Richard and Judy!

The Natural Way

10:44 / 03.02.03

I now really like the Tatu single.

Hattie's Kitchen

08:56 / 04.02.03

I'm now sooo into Tatu, I'm in a way making up for having by-passed my teenybopper phase, when I liked Bauhaus and The Smiths when everyone in my class fancied Duran Duran and Wham...I don't think they're being manipulated in any way - they seem like two very savvy and confident girls who know exactly what they're doing, and they're having fun with it, and I say good luck to them. They make good catchy pop music and they know how to work it. The fact they're both extremely cute and I wouldn't say no to being in a girl sandwich with them is an added bonus. Who cares if they're gay or straight? How many boybands have played up to the gay angle - you only have to look at the names, for fuck's sake. Boyzone? Backstreet Boys?

As for Richard and Judy, I harbour suspicions that Judy in particlar protesteth too much...

Aethelwine Jedi

14:06 / 04.02.03

Heh, if I recall correctly, didn't Take That start off doing the gay club circuit first to build up hype or something?

And yes, it really irks me that two girls kissing automatically equates=OMG HETEROSEXUAL MALE PORN!!! in some people's little worlds. I didn't even think the video was that saucy, since the kissing seemed more sweet than humpahumpaLesboPr0n. Got to wonder about the minds of the people who saw it and immediately thought that it was *indecently* sexy.

14:16 / 04.02.03

"All The Things She Said" is the best pop song I've heard since "Don't Stop Moving", and it would STILL be a brilliant pop record if it had been made by Fred West and Harold Shipman.

Oh, and "Just shut your mouth, how can you say I go about things the wrong way? I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does" - somehow it seems even MORE appropriate for teenage Russian lesbians than asexual Mancunian waifs.

NDD

14:17 / 04.02.03

Oh and BTW I'll put money on them selling shedloads in America.

18:51 / 04.02.03

Hey, here comes Johnny Yen again! Are you gonna do another striptease?

01:33 / 05.02.03

How many boybands have "played up the gay angle"? Well, I'd argue that there's a difference between deliberately evoking homoerotic imagery, playing gay clubs, etc. (which more or less every up-and-coming popular beat combo does these days) and actually identifying as being gay. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a single boyband member who's done that of his own volition...

Regrettable Juvenilia

06:55 / 05.02.03

Was Stephen Gately outed unwillingly by the press or did he reveal his sexuality of his own accord? Not that it's comparable to T.a.t.u., but you've just jogged my memory...

08:25 / 05.02.03

Of his own accord, supposedly, coincidentally juuust before the tabloids did. Funny, that.

09:34 / 05.02.03

people be talking about that song in a way not seen since kylie. notice the self-reinforcing similarity of these two especially viral refrains:

'i can't get you out of my head boy yr loving is all i think about'

'all the things she said running thru my head running thru my head etc'

anything that gets madeley uncrossing his legs like that is fine by me

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:34 / 05.02.03

Well, I'd argue that there's a difference between deliberately evoking homoerotic imagery, playing gay clubs, etc. (which more or less every up-and-coming popular beat combo does these days) and actually identifying as being gay.

Was just thinking about this - surely this makes the comparison actually quite accurate, because 'officially' at least, T.a.t.u. *aren't* queer. They just love each other. Reminds me of an interview with Robbie Williams just after he left the That, back when he was still likable: asked whether he and Mark Owen had even been lovers, he said "We love each other - does that make us lovers?". It's about obfuscation, ambiguity - and sure, if that's there because pop stars *can't* risk coming out as umambiguously gay (as I'm sure is the case incredibly frequently), that sucks. But ambiguity is in itself no bad thing... and now I think about it, maybe T.a.t.u. covering The Smiths is actually the cleverest, most knowing thing about them. Wiiill-yaaaaaam...

10:43 / 05.02.03

Pop stars playing up the gay angle? Surely not! Why, if the people of this country were willing to buy records by gay people, surely there would have been hits by Elton John, Dave Bowie, Boy George, Marc Bolan, Will Young, Marc Almond, Madonna...hang on there have been haven't they?

And no, I'm not going to do another striptease. I'm too busy beating my brain with liquor and drugs.

11:20 / 05.02.03

Well, naturally sexual ambiguity is a good thing. I was under the impression that T.a.t.u. had actually said they were lesbians but, if they're being more nebulous about it, then fine. I still think the whole 'we love each other - WITH SNOGGING!' popstar thing is tolerated much more when women do it; boyband members have to stick pretty rigidly to the NO SNOGGING! equivalent.

JohnnyYen: sure, sexual ambiguity again - but how many on that list voluntarily identified as gay at the outset of their careers?

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:27 / 05.02.03

True enough, 'Nesh. I do think that it's always good, when bemoaning a double standard, to make sure you know which way you want it rectified - ie, I want teenage boys snogging on TOTP, not to ban these two girls from doing it - and some of even the most supposedly progressive commentators I've read (thinking of online stuff mostly) have seemed to lean the other way. (I suspect this is because they're all fucking puritans under that right-on facade, but that's just me.0

19:38 / 05.02.03

I want boys of all ages snogging, on TOTP and elsewhere. That would completely rectify the 'double standard' in my eyes...

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:56 / 05.02.03

Don't know about that. "Equality for all colours, sexualities, genders and creeds, but put the over 30s in camps", that's my motto...

22:18 / 05.02.03

I do think the video to the Tatu single is a big marketing ploy, but that the song itself is fairly decent. I even think the singing sounds suitably anguished for the lyrics.

This song has been damned by most of my contemporaries (B mus students), mostly for the video but also because the song hits a fairly up-beat pace and stays on the same level. As a result it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere, and gets a bit repetitive. You hear the exact same chorus four or five times (haven't counted that carefully). The musos I know really dig subtlety, and this song just isn't.

01:16 / 06.02.03

Probably revealing my shallowness here, but as a general rule, if musicians like it I think it's a bag of shit. They're the daft bastards who told us Jethro Tull were better than the Sex Pistols, after all. Pop music "repetitive"? Well, not half as much as Michael Nyman.

Oh, and "subtlety" is found in the dictionary right between "shit" and "syphlilis".

NDD

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:49 / 07.02.03

Somewhere near 'stunning' ISTR. Anyway, will be watching TotP tonight to see if they smack each other's arses like Fischerspooner did when they were on with Kylie.

And on the grounds that the Smiths were, are, and always will be a tedious bunch of session musicians fronted by a lanky get who doesn't bother with more than one verse in his songs, I declare the Tatu cover of 'what time is now' even better than the real thing.

10:02 / 07.02.03

"'What Time Is Now'"? Pfft...

18:20 / 07.02.03

It seems TOTP made the sensible decision of cutting away from TATU's performance so that viewers could be protected from seeing two girls kissing. I may faint....

See? There you were thinking you were living in an enlightened society and all the time you were living on the Planet Of The Apes.

And now over to General Urko for the weather......

Our Lady of The Two Towers

10:42 / 08.02.03

I don't watch it regularly so I don't know if it's now common practice to cut away from the visuals in the middle of the song to advertise other yoof music programming. Otherwise, replacing the school fence with prison bars, interesting touch.

12:08 / 08.02.03

I saw Tatu on TotP last night. The song was great: real Euro stadium-rock, but with a very kitsch seventies feel to it. A bit like Abba, I thought. The two grrlies are obviously late teenage, so I don't see what the paedo-problem is. I remember the Mini Pops. Nuff said.

What has pissed me off about the whole thing was that part of the performance was chopped to show what was happening the next week. When it returned to Tatu, the women had obviously been kissing. So, as far as Totp is concerned, rampant, aggressive heterosexuality is fine, but lesbian sexuality (either real or as a gimmick, although what little I actually saw of that didn't look particularly gimmicky to me) is invisible.

20:55 / 08.02.03

Top Of The Pops always seems quite confused by that sort of thing. I remember The Bloodhound Gang being on doing "The Bad Touch", and they bleeped the word "pants" (in the line "put your hands down my pants"). Later in the same show they played Sisqo's "The Thong Song". Weird.

22:42 / 08.02.03

Much as I hate them for that Smiths' cover, All The Things She Said isn't entirely dreadful.

But.

They also recorded it in Russian and did a video of it in Russian... and it's ghastly. All the lines break in the wrong places, it's garbled and spitty and just entirely wrong. Try and find the Russian, version folks; it's proof positive that songs don't translate, and I'm guessing the song was originally written in English... the Russian version is remarkably dreadful, and yet all that's different are the words.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

22:59 / 08.02.03

Yes Paleface, the uber language is English. All songs should be written in the universal mother tongue, the language of all languages: ENGLSH

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

23:01 / 08.02.03

And pronounced in the proper drunken dialect!!

08:44 / 09.02.03

I think my point was somewhat missed.

I was just pointing out that it's curious that, for a Russian group, a song that had both Russian and English versions recorded sounds a lot better in the latter. I wasn't, like, advocating all songs should be written in the "mother tongue" or anything.

Jesus.

13:27 / 09.02.03

The original song was written in Russian and both Russian and English versions feature on the 200km/h In The Wrong Lanealbum.

Personally, I think the original version sounds fine but, strangely enough, there is something quite engaging about the way they sing in English in their own distinctive style.

10:52 / 10.02.03

I caught the TotP repeat the other night. Just to clear things up, they *do* usually have a 'next week' teaser similar to the one inserted into the Tatu performance, but it normally consists of clips of more than one group and, IIRC, appears further in to the song than this did and doesn't look as clumsy. I'd guess that, if asked, the director would justify the editing as being based on the song's structure, rather than what was happening in the studio at that precise moment.

I particularly liked the way that they didn't want to show two teenage women kissing, but had no qualms about focusing the cameras on their breasts for the majority of the performance.

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