Tatu raised eyebrows all over Europe and Asia last year, while barely managing to get a shoulder shrug out of most Americans. Like Posh and Becks' Spanish invasion, and Justin Timberlake's scandalous Minogue double-dip at last year's Brit awards, Tatu is (or arguably, was) a foreign phenomenon that didn't translate to American pop culture.
The ambiguously gay Russian duo burst onto the international scene with their exotic brand of techno-pop taking the backseat to their wide-eyed Lolita expressions and an acutely subversive suggestiveness—ruffling feathers from the Red Square to Piccadilly Circus. But over here, Tatu was barely a blip on the radar. Their "girls gone wild" routine was relegated to distant background music by the time Britney and Madonna shared their on-stage smooch at the VMAs. Now, with rumors rampant of one of the member's possible pregnancy (presumably with her boyfriend, who was outed as such months ago), Tatu is hanging on to the tabloid pages and fan sites, while America remains oblivious to the ensuing controversy. Either intensely scrutinized or largely ignored, Julia and Lena seemed to suffer the same frustration of many an angsty teenager: No one listened to them.
Tatu is a cheeky, catchy tease. All the "are they or aren't they" and questions of kiddie porn were presumably supposed to steer people toward their music, but instead, their image took on a life of its own. There's no denying that Tatu's image has been cultivated with an aggressiveness that makes Prince look like subway crooner. The group's two members were selected from 500 auditionees for the roles in a multi-faceted male fantasy with details calculated by former psychologist and advertising executive (how's that for a killer combination), Ivan Shapovalov. But the fact that Tatu was an act wasn't the issue. Many people want their music as performance, at least some of the time. It wasn't even what their act suggested, per se; rather it was how they suggested it. Tatu may be heterosexual, but they certainly weren't straight. Part of their undeniably crafted image was a scripted elusiveness, a defiant refusal to come clean. It is for this reason that Tatu captured the attention of MTV-viewers around the world after they shook things up at home, and got loads of viewers hot and bothered. They were mischievously shifty, evasive to a maddening degree, and, as the girls cagily belted, "They're not gonna get us..."
We didn't. As they drifted westward, Tatu picked up a pretty damning reputation in the American market—they were, well, a mess. They were one-trick ponies whose gimmick wasn't edgy or authoritative enough to satisfy our desire for being totally dominated by our pop stars. We want brands, attitudes, instantly understandable images that can inspire fashion trends, grace notebook covers, and spearhead powerful fan clubs. The premise of Tatu's image rested on this ambiguity that we found frustrating—not exciting. Here in the US, we expect "Stronger," "Bootylicious," and "Crazy,"—not "All the Things She Said." Tatu's sultry "we're whatever you want us to be" didn't work the way Britney's emphatic declaration that she's "A Slave 4 You," not because we were offended by their sexual innuendos but because we were unmoved by them.
At the end of the day, Tatu's flagrant elusiveness completely obscured their attractively eclectic album, both in America and abroad. 200 km on the Wrong Side of the Road, for all the hairpin turns (like their excellent cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now") is a great ride. What the girls lack in vocal strength they make up for with a vivaciousness and intensity that reveals true teen angst, albeit buried beneath techno beats. But who was listening close enough to hear that? Abroad, most seemed too riled up by the scandalous innuendo and the excessive marketing efforts, while in America, we just couldn't get it up for these confused antsy teenagers.
The lesson of Tatu and their bizarre career arc is that even in these carefully calculated, super-spun times, image isn't everything. But sometimes, it is the only thing.
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