Lyusya Chebotina takes aim at Diva in her new album

The “Pop Princesses” of the current moment, like a flock of migrating geese, took off at once and rushed to God knows where. They jostle not with elbows, but with albums, as if trying to replace each other with premieres at the same point in time. Anna Asti, Zivert, and now here is Lyusya Chebotina. Losing her feet, “ZD” listened and looked at the first one last time, today it’s the turn of the other two. Not a day of rest! And while Zivert is giving the interview above, singer Lyusya Chebotina released the album “First Lady,” which became the third in her career.

There are only 7 songs, but they are original, their own. For a pop artist known mainly for covers and stellar collaborations, such a set of solo tracks is already an achievement. On the alternative scene, singing girls usually don’t know what to do with their creativity, like a sprout from a fairy-tale pot of “don’t cook any more.” In dance pop, the field in which Lucy works, poetic and composing attempts rarely happen, so it’s interesting what is born there as a result.

The first thing that catches your eye is the artist’s deliberate desire to be associated with royal status (the influence of Kirkorov’s friend, the self-called “king of pop”?). Even before turning on the music, the consumer of “high art” is already reading the signals – “First Lady”. There is a title for the album, but there is no song of the same name on it, so this title seems to be artificially tacked on. But then you see the first track, and it sounds no less than “Diva”, that is, if you translate from Italian into English, and then into Russian, then it just comes out as “First Lady”. This is the kind of simple crossword puzzle that the entertaining singer offers her listeners from the doorstep.

The theme of a strong woman who “cries at the window” shines through the entire track, not literally, but in hints. But if Alla Pugacheva’s songs (the reference to whose image is obvious) were mostly plot-based and therefore understandable and clear, then here there is complete confusion. First, Lucy sings to herself in the first person that “it was always dark in my soul,” and then in the third person about “how sincerely and in spite of herself the Prima Donna loved.” The line adds even more confusion: “You told the truth to your face, and now you’re on the blacklist.” What is meant is not clear from the context of the song, especially since the context of current events suggests a lot of interpretations on this topic. The question remains open: is this song dedicated to Alla Borisovna, as Pugacheva once dedicated her “Diva” to the brilliant actress Lyudmila Gurchenko, or is Lyusya Chebotina aiming for the Prima Donna? History, of course, will put (yes, it has already put it a long time ago!) everyone in their places, but I would like clarity “in the moment.”

“ZD” paid attention to Lucy six months ago, when her duet with Philip Kirkorov called “Queen” was released. Even then, their ostentatious non-spillage was intrusively visible on social networks. Kirkorov, however, did not miss a single skirt in this case – he made out with all the girls from the current top, from the same Asti to today’s Lucy, also hooking up with Zivert along the way.

Both in the West and in Russia, due to such “friendships”, more established singers receive the loyalty of a younger audience, and fame-hungry starlets receive a portion of status wealth. A well-rolled mechanism of a steam locomotive, when the locomotive is a large star, and the carriages are “substars,” as sarcastic journalists call them among themselves. It would seem that they played with the train and forgot, but Kirkorov stubbornly continues to “make friends” on the topic of “Diva”. Having appeared at the presentation of the album (the duet with F.K. “Koroleva”, by the way, was not included in it – scandal!), he created a sensation not only as a socialite, but also as a generous philanthropist, remaining faithful to his old love, a man of the kindest soul. In front of the amazed public, Phil slobbered 700 thousand rubles in red five thousand for a painting by an unknown artist just because it was called “Diva”. Sargent gossips immediately began to calculate the red percentage, which in turn is “slobbered” on the king of pop for “such and such PR” by the team of each of the “pop birthday girls”. Envious people, what can you take from them!

But Chebotina’s “royal” theme is also supported by the video for the song “Empress” released a couple of weeks ago, a cover of the early 90s hit from Irina Allegrova. Formally, the clip has nothing to do with the album and looks like an expensive advertising video for several brands at once in a rococo aesthetic that is suffocating in its importunity – with balls, lace costumes, giant wigs, crinolines and, finally, cakes in the hands of the queen. Both Johnny Depp and his Countess Dubari are crying, and Sofia Coppola is crying with her Marie Antoinette, whose famous pseudo-phrase: “If the poor have run out of bread, then let them eat cakes” could easily be taken as an epigraph to the video.

All this royal theme and aesthetics, with which the singer Lyusya has been covering herself like soap foam over the last year, diligently performing quite deep vocal-oral steps, is already perceived either as too deliberate pressing on the same pain point of the artist, or as too intrusive self-promotion. Again, the question is: the vicious influence of the “friend” or has the cuckoo itself gone in the wrong direction?

There are, however, other themes in the album. Following the consumer culture, in the very unkind song “Pseudomodels,” the artist associates herself with an expensive handbag. Let’s be honest, in past times the artist Yarmolnik was able to portray an iron or a fried chicken more convincingly than Lyusa was able to portray an expensive bag. The point is that around Chebotina, less fortunate girls are trying to copy her appearance and behavior, but they fail, because they are fake and corrupt, and she is real, popular, with a lot of money, therefore, qualitatively better. Enjoying herself, the girl sings: “With flashing lights on a private board, I’m a superstar, and you’re a nobody. It’s like I’m the first lady of the country, they want everything like me, they buy clothes, dye their hair, but they can’t be the same as me.”

The key word here, of course, is “I” and “as if.” I wonder if Lyusya Chebotina (born in 1997) actually thinks that she uniquely came up with the image of a blonde with a handbag? A “fresh” director’s find – a limousine with flashing lights takes her to the airport through traffic jams, in which, apparently, these despicable “nobodies” are standing. Judging by the fact that a quote from this particular song heads the album (yes, the secret of the disc’s name is not immediately revealed), this is its heart, essence and sad truth.

In contrast, I remember “Song about me” by the real Diva Alla Pugacheva with its modest chorus “Just like everyone else, like everyone else, like everyone else”…

The countless quotes from other authors, copy-paste and references to third-party performers that fill the disc don’t really fit in with Lyusya’s creative suffering on the topic of her own glory and uniqueness. Here you can hear that “Moscow didn’t believe her tears,” and “let them talk,” and practically Zemfirov’s “Do you want it?” in the track “As you want”, and again Zemfirov’s “Abuse” in the song of the same name, and “waterfalls of tears” from Lagutenko… From such “uniqueness” the girl weaves her personal crown in order to lead an unknown kingdom. Which one? What is…

To be fair, it is worth noting that the record also contains real “serious” reflections on “how much love costs” in the track of the same name. It is filled with worries about whether Lucy has enough money, where to find love and where to fly for it (with flashing lights past those who are “nobodies”), and whether she needs love at all. In the context of glorifying her own success, the artist also remembers her loved ones, communication with whom suffers as a result of her fame. Actually, the girl did not show anything new in a semantic sense – we have already heard all this a thousand hundred times before, right from the time of Tsar Gorokh, as in her only super hit so far, “The Sun. Monaco”, where she asks a reasonable question, why does she need the sun of Monaco and the moon of Saint-Tropez (prestigious resorts on the Cote d’Azur, attracting women and men who want to meet princes and princesses), if there is no “him” nearby, the only one.

Really, why? Stay in Moscow and be nice to Kirkorov…