I mentioned Pugacheva. I can't believe I'm plugging this woman.
> "Alla Pugacheva's Everlasting Magic".
> Alex Berdnick, "What's on", 15-21.03.2002.
>
>
>
> For most foreigners, Alla Pugacheva is a phenomenon; simply the biggest
> Soviet enigma of them all. An aged, stout woman in baggy clothes and
> tasteless wigs, singing catchy tunes with what used to be her voice, she
> comes across as a laughable icon to the average expat. But then again, two
> hundred and eighty million Soviet citizens can't have been wrong, can
> they?
> Alla actually started out in 1965, finding fame of sorts at the age of
> sixteen with the song 'Robot'. The way to the top took ten long years.
> Committees responsible for amateur performance immediately labelled her as
> 'vulgar and anti-Soviet', and only support from the giants of Soviet show
> business could help her. Real stardom came later in 1975 with stunning
> success at the Golden Orpheus song contest in Bulgaria, where the
> 26-year-old Alla took the grand prix. After that, the hits just wouldn't
> stop, and all the while she enjoyed a mixed reaction from the critics,
> hate from the authorities and love from the people.
> One obvious reason why Pugacheva was much adored was that she wasn't the
> typical star with a perfect body and a Hollywood smile. She was one of the
> people, and, song by song, concert by concert, she wasn't afraid of
> expressing what was on her mind. At the end of the seventies she was still
> singing about 'Starry Summers' and Dreams, but by the beginning of the
> eighties some darker notes started appearing in her lyrics. "People,
> people, why don't you let me be?" she would sing, "I am tired of being
> good, I am tired of being bad!".
> She had become the ultimate star. Her concerts were packed; her records
> could compete with ABBA's sales in the Soviet Union. In fact in 1983 two
> of the Fabulous Four Swedes, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, visited
> Pugacheva in Moscow, with a very generous offer - a role in their musical
> with Tim Rice called 'Chess'. Alla, however, had to refuse. She would have
> had to play the wife of a Soviet chess player who escapes to the West with
> an American girl. Besides, for the project Pugacheva would have had to
> leave USSR for at least a year. "One could only imagine what the reaction
> of the RGB would have been," noted Alla many years later. Still, the
> Swedish boys helped Alla to produce her first (and the only)
> English-language album 'Watch Out!'. Pugacheva turned out to be one of the
> last of the People's Artists of the Soviet Union, a title she belatedly
> received at the end of 1991, somewhat ironically, after the Belovezhska
> treaty had already abolished the USSR. The new epoch brought lots of
> things to Alla, including the chance to earn real money. Tours abroad
> without restrictions also followed, and her flirtation with plaastic
> surgery also began - although her first operation back in 1992 almost
> killed her. Most controversially of all, after 1991 she began to make
> changes in her private life. In 1993, Alla divorced her longtime partner,
> Yevgeny Boldin. A year later, aged 45, she married 26-year-old Bulgarian
> singer Filip Kirkorov. The inevitable scandal was enormously hyped up by
> the press, but Pugacheva was never on this planet to please -she has
> always been here to stun. She stunned everyone later at the end of 1995,
> when she announced she was abandoning the stage for 'an indefinite term'.
> In 1996 she stu nned everyone by releasing the 13 CD collection containing
> all her works of the 'Soviet' period (1965-1993). Finally, in 1997 she
> stunned the whole of Europe by agreeing to take part in Eurovision song
> contest. The song 'Prima Donna', however, only managed to come in
> fifteenth place. But again, Pugacheva was not there to win - which was
> impossible to do with a Russian song - she was there to stun.
> Now on her sixth comeback (or thereabouts) Pugacheva doesn't mind singing
> dubious material, appearing on stage in whatever image she feels like and
> even cancelling interviews and concerts at the drop of a hat. What would
> seem to be a total disgrace for a foreign person, is taken with
> understanding and even reverence by former Soviet citizens.
> Why? Quite simply, Pugacheva is an icon. People love Pugacheva for
> catching what was on their minds and in their souls; for the fact that she
> allows everyone to see themselves in her. And that's why the icon of
> Pugacheva will never fade away, whatever happens to the original.