Participant of “Star Factory” and “Voice” Katya Shemyakina spoke about new songs and James Brown’s kiss

The three new songs and videos that Katy has already released to everyone’s attention are impressive and puzzling. The singer somehow managed to stop time: a slender and energetic person dances dashingly in the frame, and a suspiciously young voice sounds on the audio track. Katie writes all the songs herself, and producer Alex Hook, who has long cut his teeth on hits for a variety of artists, helps her with arrangements and sound. And the singer’s plans can be called decisive.

“I’ve finally matured, and completely, you can’t stop it.” Over the summer, I wrote more than fifteen new tracks for a solo project, and now my plans are to record them, assemble a team, and create a concert program. I feel in shape that I haven’t been in for a long time.

— You’ve probably already noticed that twenty-year-old bloggers are now dancing in the territory of pop music with certain material. Your music is completely different. Do you think it will be relevant now?

— I have a conscious understanding of what audience I work for. These are, first of all, women for whom everything in life has not turned out great. For a long time I wrote songs about the bright, eternal and life-affirming, but then I realized: there must also be drama. And if she’s around failed love, it goes deep. Even if there is no similar current situation, every woman can remember how everything once developed. I’m not going to hide my age or pretend to be thirty. I’m forty-four. For the last twenty years I’ve lived a quiet life and didn’t get involved in big show business; that wasn’t a priority. And now my child has grown up, gone to school, and I want to be more fully realized. It motivates me very much that all this is happening right now, in my mature years. Probably, after forty, many people regret the lost time. And I had to study earlier and make a career. But I do everything now, and I like that a lot is working out. At the last Oscars, many awards were received by very mature people, with experience of a lull in their careers. And this inspires women too. Nothing ends at forty. These are the same twenty.

— In my opinion, music authors who are still trying to come up with pleasant melodies and write texts that are not devoid of logic have had their lives pretty spoiled by tik-tok-pop. Short songs of dance rhythm and verbal confusion…

— I always felt the scale between format and non-format. My desire for it or my deliberate lack of it. The songs I’m writing now are quite far from jazz, funk and all the difficulties associated with the perception of these genres. But, of course, I want it to be musical. Are such songs needed now or not? Who knows. There is so much information, and getting to the top with it is a real lottery. Although many mechanisms have been developed to achieve success. I would like to connect them, and I hope everything works out. Now for the first time I feel like I’m doing what is needed in music today.

— You are very bright in your videos. Did someone advise you or did you do it all yourself?

– Well, as it is, don’t hide yourself in your pocket. Of course, I consult with a stylist. By the way, I have a very young team, all twenty plus, and it’s very cool to come up with something together. For example, a twenty-one-year-old stylist said that she had never worked in this style before and this was the first time she learned about Cher, her outfits and fashion history. I wanted some kind of funkiness both in music and in style. So that, on the one hand, it’s a waste, but at the same time it doesn’t go wrong. In general, my mother is my main critic. I was afraid to show the new video, I thought she would destroy everything, but she liked it. From her, as from a person of the older generation, there could be complaints that everyone there is super sexy. But mom said: “Just right, perfect, as sexy as needed.”

— You also have a jazz life, and in this area you communicate with serious guys for whom pop music is an object of ridicule. They will probably make jokes about your new songs…

– Let them go. What could be worse than when everyone is talking about you? Only if they don’t say a word about you. I was lucky enough to work with great jazz musicians. We regularly perform with the Max Dorbeko Quartet at Alexey Kozlov’s club. As a soloist of the American band Sasha’s Block under the direction of Alexander Gershman, I traveled to many Russian jazz festivals. And the serious musicians with whom I communicate do everything they can. Pop music too. This is already a familiar story, we watch each other on social networks, discuss, but are not surprised by anything. It’s great when people do something.

— From the outside, working in jazz clubs seems like something measured. Unlike big show business, where you need to reach the top every day. But you apparently missed hot emotions…

“I always had enough.” Recently, besides music, I have a lot of other worries: from farming to construction. For quite a long time I thought that ideally I needed a manager, a producer, and my task was simply to sit at the dressing table, trim my face with concealer and wait for them to call and tell me where my concert was and under what conditions. I dreamed about this all my life, but never had anything like it. And, apparently, I realized that this does not happen, or at least my story does not imply this. This means that you need to take your hands in your hands and do everything yourself, if possible delegating certain things to specialists. I probably started by renovating the house, learning how to run a house, and when everything settled down on this front, I decided to become a foreman on my own music project.

— You mentioned producers and managers to whom you could entrust your career, but with whom things didn’t work out for you. However, after participating in the first “Star Factory” you were one step away from a contract with Igor Matvienko. And she refused…

— I didn’t really like the environment that could develop in this production center. I thought this was not my story at all, although it probably sounds a little arrogant. In addition, I was married, and at the family council we decided that I did not need such a contract. It’s kind of scary to sign up for seven years. And before that, I managed to work as a backing vocalist with Alsou, and on tour with her the conditions could not be better. For two years we had such a great time that the fees and bus rides that were offered to me at the production center looked simply ridiculous.

— After “Star Factory,” most likely, all your illusions about how music television works were dispelled. But a few years later you came to “The Voice”. For what?

– There were still illusions. I watched the second season of “The Voice” and simply admired how Tina Kuznetsova sang her song, how Anton Belyaev shot. Having seen all this, I galloped there in the blind confidence that I would sing a song of my own composition, they would recognize me as an author and performer, and there would be great interest in me. But nothing like that happened, and that’s for the best. Disappointed with the scene then, I decided to do really important things and gave birth to a child.

“Having children affects everyone differently. Some people want to focus only on family and education, while others just grow wings. You are apparently from the second group…

“Now my son is seven years old, and I’m just happy that I’ve been with him all this time.” A child with dad and mom is surrounded by love, attention and care. I have often wondered in my head about how my colleagues with a busy tour schedule and small children manage to cope with everything. They probably always have the feeling that they are not giving the child something and that the child suffers because the mother is not around. Things turned out differently for me, and now, having sent my child to school, I can go about my business.

— You have a very checkered musical resume. In addition to jazz and blues, you wrote songs for the groups “Prime Minister” and “Assorted”; tracks of your authorship ended up in the films “At the Game-2” and “Silver Lily of the Valley”. Which of all this do you like best?

— Funk gives me the brightest vibrations. For Russia, funk is a niche style, but I really like it, and I’m ready to continue introducing the public to this hot, sophisticated music. I sang in Andrei Davidyan’s group Sound Cake for seven years, and we had a strong funk repertoire. In our group “Shemyakina-band” we also played funk classics. I remember I was at James Brown’s concerts twice, Nikolai Arutyunov, the leader of the Blues League, one might say, my teacher, who, unfortunately, is now deceased, invited me to one of them. He and I came to the Kremlin, and I managed to make my way to the edge of the stage in the standing stalls. At some point, James was right in front of me, suddenly pulled me by the hand and kissed me on the cheek. So I’m kissed by James Brown.