t.A.T.u was a Russian music group consisting of 2 girls: Yulia Volkova and Lena Katina and ‘All The Things She Said’ is their most popular and successful single. It was released on 9th September 2002.
Song Facts and Meaning
The song is about 2 girls wanting each other. They are lesbians and have feelings for each other but because homosexuality is frowned upon they are unable to embrace it. The girls have come to the realization that they like each other and also know this sort of a relationship is a taboo.
So, even if they try to avoid the feelings they can’t help it and eventually give in. They plan to escape to a place where they can enjoy each other’s company with no one around to judge them.
The song is supposed to express the societal pressure and problems that homosexual people deal with. The idea first came to Elena Kiper who is a co-writer of the song. She had an appointment with a dentist and fell asleep during the surgery. She had a dream where Tutta Larsen a female Russian MTV personality was trying to kiss her. She told her boyfriend Ivan Shopavalov about it and he decided to create t.A.T.u. based around this concept.
Lesbianism was not an accepted theme in the music industry yet Ivan felt that there was a huge market for it. The legal age for consent in Russia is 14 years and since the 2 girls were beyond the age of consent it was not illegal for them to be portrayed in the video like that. Several organizations protested to ban the video and certain music stations deleted the parts of the girls kissing. The song has over 300 million views on youtube as of now.
Both Yulia and Lena were straight teenagers and didn’t know that they had to kiss each other but they went along with it as they had already signed the contract. Ivan Shopalvalov in a way exploited them knowing that this would captivate attention of a large male population that is attracted to juvenile teenage girls making out with each other.
The group was selected for Eurovision Song Contest and Shopavalov arranged for 200 girls to appear in the video for the contest where they would be kissing each other. Shopavalov was later arrested for the shoot as it got out of control.
The group broke up in 2011 as both Yulia and Lena went their separate ways.
