t.A.T.u., Ya tebya lyublyu

Dear t.A.T.u.,

I just wanted to write an open letter to the both of you expressing my gratitude for writing such wonderful songs. Among my favorites are "Robot," without which I would have never learned to roll my 'r's and would not have learned about artificial love and artificial honey (?) and artificial ice; "Bylo i Proshlo" which makes wonderful use of the lately underused vocodor; and "Ya tvoya ne pervaya" (I am not your first) in which you lament a one-sided relationship. Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, I don't care that you are not really lesbians. It was a great marketing gimic (credited to your producer Ivan Shapovalov) at the beginning of your burgeoning career to pretend to be lesbians masquerading as two girls who just really love each other a lot. The only thing cooler than Russian lesbians is faux Russian lesbians, because that means that all hope is not lost that I might one day wed Yulia (or Lena, if Yulia is taken). Your ruse on the world was something out of perhaps a latter day incarnation of Bret Easton Ellis' _American Psycho_. It was a clever expose of the early aught's fixation on a transgressive fantasy. It was a brilliant trick, and when you came out as heterosexual on the video "Anatomy of t.A.T.u" in December of 2003 and further corroborated the fact when Yulia had a child with Pavel Sidorov in September of 2004, I'll bet that you alienated that segement of your fanbase consisting of 50 year old single men living in their mother's basements, but those were not your true fans. Those of us to whom this makes not matter appreciate your artistry and don't need a gimic to sell us your music (great music has neither sexual orientation nor statutory rape clause). Though as I stated, that you had such a gimic, as such, makes me love you only more. It was a device for facilitating social self-consciousness. We learned a bit about ourselves as a culture when you kissed on Mtv and we cheered and purchased your albums because of the spectacle only to find it was all a charade. It took me a while to see the genius in your work and by the time I came around, the lesbian facade was dropped. Once we were ready to be truthful with each other, we were ready to love each other.




-Brian