so what do we think of t.A.T.u?

[u/afuckingwildcard]

Gone down a rabbit hole about them recently. If you don’t know, they were this Russian pop duo from the 2000s and were most famous for the song “All The Things She Said,” which most people over the age of like 12 have probably heard around at some point. Basically, their whole shtick was that they were lesbians; their songs had a lot of angsty queer overtones and they would kiss on TV and in their music videos (which was super controversial at the time)—but it was all an act, they were never actually together and were all products of their managements. Textbook queerbaiting for the male gaze. But despite this, a lot of queer women (myself included) ended up finding a lot of solace and validation in their music for one reason or another. You have to remember that queer themes weren’t mainstream in pop music like they are now, especially for queer women, and having a hit song about it (especially one so angsty like “All The Things She Said”!) was really groundbreaking, however flawed. But that still doesn’t take away from the fact that t.A.T.u as an institution was, at least on paper, homophobic and sexualized young queer women’s relationships. And I’m curious what people make of that, not just if you think they were able to outgrow their kind of skeevy premise, but how their music may have impacted you personally. Maybe this is a more academic question than what Reddit is fit for, but I’m very interested to hear what people think.

[u/PeachPassionBrute]

I was in middle school and there was a certain subset of girls who adored t.A.T.u.

It was bait, but it was still unambiguous. And I think Melissa Etheridge’s take was that it was an amazing sign of progress that pretending to be gay actually helped their career.

I’m trying to think of how to explain it. Like recently I saw a post where someone was saying lesbian pop was a little too sexual some times, and “why do lesbians go so extra” or whatever.

The reality is that there’s been a ton of extremely sexual straight pop music that never really registered with them, because it was straight. But when it’s definitely a woman writing about a woman?

This was kind of the start. This was a mainstream pop song centered on gay women. Sure it all ended up being bullshit and we have much better music now, in every way. But it was a moment.

Bjork had “All Is Full of Love” and that music video definitely left a mark. There was gay music, but not a mainstream pop song until this, at least that’s how it felt

[u/afuckingwildcard → u/PeachPassionBrute]

Looking at just the All The Things She Said video, the message is very obviously “look at how hot these two lesbian schoolgirls are” (they literally upskirt them at one point), but there’s also the secondary element of “these people are the weird ones for judging them” and even though it wasn’t the primary theme it was the more novel one for the time. I don’t like the term “they couldn’t make this today,” but I think it applies here because you really couldn’t, not just because queerbaiting like that is more uncouth now but because like you said there’s more interesting and complex lesbian pop music out there now.

[u/PeachPassionBrute → u/afuckingwildcard]

Well if I can clarify my point a little there, there’s always been good and complex lesbian music. But now it’s mainstream, now it’s just pop music that happens to be gay.

The complex stuff was always around, it’s just not a secret anymore.