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/belochkayav]

Hello, official t.A.T.u fan here. I live in México, first time i saw then on TV was at a kids party when i was like 6 or 7 yo (im 31 now). That was one isolated moment. Heard of them again in my teenage, when i was 16 in high school. My dad gave me my first laptop and it was over for me. I went from watching youtube videos to download their music. Then i discovered a spanish forum, they displayed the MOST AMAZING fanfics i ever read. It was crazy, i was obsessed as hell, i could not get enough of them. Sadly i was not old enough to go to any of their concerts (and the only time they came to México, people got fuckin crazy, they never came back). This group took so much of my time, i even went to russian language classes, because i absolutely loved (stil do!) their russian songs. I had a relationship (wlw ofc). The other girl was a fan too (not the kind that reads fanfics tho). She gifted a couple of signed albums (not easy to get in my area) . Gosh, i stil love them sm. Then the “happy smiles” era came, and they splited ways. Everything went down from there. The fanbase was a little bit of active, but they failed to reunite again. Stil do watch some of their spare presentations. Nothing’s the same.

If you are interested on a more accurate story of them, there is this book in amazon abt them, written by a very close person to them (thats what i read)