I've been listening to t.A.T.u this morning after an offhand comment on Twitter about the fact there was originally supposed to be an anime based on Lena Katina and Julia Volkova at some point in the past. How odd.
Anyway, this impromptu listening session reminded me that I actually unironically enjoyed t.A.T.u's music when it first came out, but it was one of those things that, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was "supposed" to like. And I think my changing attitude there is probably the biggest change I've gone through since my childhood and teenage years.
This was always a thing with music. At my school, you were judged by your musical tastes. One day, I went and bought Oasis' Definitely Maybe from the local record shop because lots of my friends were talking about it, and it seemed that liking Oasis made you marginally more socially acceptable. Trouble was, I bought Definitely Maybe literally a day before (What's the Story?) Morning Glory came out, exposing me as the ill-informed loser that I was.
Thinking back, though, I already had hints of my current "fuck what everyone else thinks" attitude back then. I bought a number of albums that most certainly weren't "cool" at the time, but which I thought I might like and, it turned out, in most cases I did. (In contrast, while I quite enjoyed Oasis, I certainly didn't find their music life-changing in the way I had been led to believe it would be.) I bought things based on things I'd heard on the radio and enjoyed; I bought things where I'd enjoyed a video I'd seen on TV; I bought things where I fancied the lead singer.
I bought t.A.T.u's first album because lesbian schoolgirls in the rain. And I was pleasantly surprised when the actual music on said album was exactly my sort of thing: tuneful, emotional, dramatic. I listened to that album a lot back in the day, but I don't think I ever told anyone I had it.
Today, I've been reading up on the rather turbulent story behind the band, including the question over whether or not the pair of them were actually gay or not (seemingly not, though they both claim to support people loving whoever they want to love) and an apparent ongoing off-on-off-on feud between the pair of them. It's been interesting to explore. And, today, of course, I feel like I'm much more able to talk about this sort of stuff, whatever other people might think of t.A.T.u and their music.
That's one thing that's definitely improved over time — both for me, and for the world at large. Shame about all the other things that are so massively and obviously worse! 🙂
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