TOO much; TATU young; Pop music has a long history of breaking down

Sunday Herald, The, Feb 2, 2003 by Iain S Bruce

In the end, it only took two pretty girls to blow a gaping hole in the smug complacency that cocoons modern morality. Armed with only a catchy beat, a savvy producer and a raunchy promotional video, tATu may have been billed as just another teenage pop act, but their arrival on these shores has thrown a savage new light upon popular culture's attitudes to sex, money and childhood.

Already eastern Europe's biggest selling band, the UK debut of Lena Katina, 18, and Julia Volkova, 17, is hotly tipped to storm to number one when the top 40 singles chart is announced today, propelled to the top by a wave of controversy virtually unparalleled in the annals of pop. Backed by a slickly produced video in which the Muscovite duo are seen dressed as school girls and locked in a passionate kiss, All The Things She Said was always going to attract notoriety, but it is claims that the act was specifically designed to tap into the paedophile market which have provoked real outrage.

"This is absolutely sickening. Courting controversy purely for the purposes of selling records is bad enough, but to cynically manipulate young people in order to wring profit from such a depraved section of society is nothing short of horrific," says John Beyer, director of the broadcasting standards watchdog Mediawatch-UK. "The whole scheme is entirely inappropriate, and we would strongly urge both parents and the media to enforce a strict boycott of the group and their products."

Provoking conservative outrage is hardly unfamiliar territory for the pop market, but claims by tATu's creator that the band were deliberately crafted to meet the requirements of men seeking underage sex go well beyond anything seen before. Former child psychologist and advertising executive Ivan Shapovalov, who recruited Katina and Volkova following a 1999 public audition, is reported to have hit upon the idea after researching paedophilic material on the internet.

"People visit pornographic sites above all others. I analysed it and found 90% of people using the internet go to porno sites first, and of these nine in 10 are looking for underage entertainment. This means there is big interest as well as some dissatisfaction - their needs are not being met," he said last week.

While shocking, Shapovalov's comments have been dismissed as pure showmanship by many music industry insiders, who suspect the Svengali- like figure of courting approbation to generate publicity. At no point in tATu's three-year history had paedophilia been mentioned before last week, and that the producer should choose to reveal this new angle so close to the girls' debut release reeks of opportunism.

"If you can whip up enough controversy and generate calls for a record to be banned, you're almost guaranteed major sales," says Hooman Majd, who for 11 years served as vice-president at Island Records, stablemate to tATu's label Interscope. "NWA did it with F*** The Police and Frankie Goes To Hollywood did it with Relax - it's a well-worn tactic."

Similarly dismissive of the paedophile claims is the retail industry. Around the country, record stores report that the hordes who snapped up 21,000 copies of All The Things She Said on the first day of sales alone consisted largely of the expected teenage audience. "The idea that this is being snapped up by seedy old men is ludicrous. It's just media-generated hype," said HMV's Gennaro Castaldo.

The tATu machine is certainly no stranger to the stench of media manipulation. During Katina and Volkova's few rare and carefully managed interviews, the duo had consistently claimed to be lovers on stage and off, but in the wake of revelations that both have boyfriends, Shapovalov has recently begun hinting that his protegees much-vaunted lesbianism is just another of his promotional inventions.

When considered calmly, many would argue that, for all the hubbub, the Muscovite minxes have merely taken the continuing sexualisation of the music business to its next logical step. Clad in provocatively skimpy high school chic, Britney Spears emerged in 1999 looking like an identikit porn princess and made her name with tracks like Born To Make You Happy that blatantly pandered to stereotypical male fantasies, yet endured only the briefest of controversies before being installed as the acceptable face of teen titillation by a slavering media. In reality, the journey from suggested locker-room seduction to explicit playground clinch is a short one.

"At the end of the day, the chances are that people will look back on this in a few years and wonder what all the fuss was about," says music journalist Ian Peel. "The fact is that we should be welcoming tATu. Their output may only be throwaway pop, but it's original, well- produced and shaking up a UK music scene that has been stagnating for far too long."

If adults are in a lather over Russia's all-time best-selling musical export, it would appear that kids aren't. Increasingly bombarded by sexual issues and provocative entertainment stars, most are already veterans of shock marketing tactics and ready to take such strategies in their stride.