The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
April 26, 2003
Tatu's music is actually pretty good In fairness, I feel it necessary to say a couple of words in defense of Tatu.
They come out of the box as a novelty act, two young Russian lesbians who sing- and like making out in public. OK, so they're basically a couple of hookers. Trevor Horn has something to do with this, and I doubt they have any songwriting credits on their album. They're just trying to get rich and famous. They lack artistic credibility, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, well somebody wrote them at least one hot song. "All the Things She Said" really works. It is an outstanding piece of music. There's an actual SONG underneath the throbbing synthesizers and all. They have a strong basic melodic hook under "all the things she said running through my head". The basic hook gets more than credible development in the verse.
I generally don't care that much for synth-pop type productions, but this one works. The music throbs quite nicely. They have some good dynamics in the production; it builds up and drops back a little, and comes in for the big finish. The vocal performance specifically comes out pretty convincing. I'm not saying they're the Supremes or anything. However, it's a little hard to pick out through the production, but at least one of these girls seems to be a better actual singer than Britney Spears, if not Diana Ross. I find the production emotionally convincing.
Somebody managed to get some interesting emotions communicated in this product. Emotional communication being a big point of music, they have legitimately accomplished the main task. They manage to put across some combination of breathless sexual turn on, and some confusion and yearning. It's really quite good if you'll give it a fair listen.
I note that I hunted down the song on a Blogcritic's recommendation with no foreknowledge of any kind other than the name of the group and title of the song. I listened to it several times in a mix tape without paying overly close attention, just absorbing the tune and the sound. I was well into digging the song before I picked up on the lesbian gimmick. That, of course, did nothing to dissuade my interest. The video (included on the CD) was nicely thought out, giving some interesting dramatic context to the basic prurient interest of watching the girls make out. I've been less impressed with other songs from their album, but even those represent competent pop songcraft.
You may just not dig on this style of music. As a conservative Christian, you can decide to be offended by the lesbian schtick. As a good left winger, you may decide to be offended by their crass commercialism.
However, by any fair aesthetic standard, the hit single represents at least better than average pop music.
