From Russia with Love

Found the first t.A.T.u. album while clearing my apartment. Just grabbed it on impulse and loaded it into iTunes, and the opening track opened a door back to somewhere I’d completely forgotten. My early twenties, my Discman, that whole era collapsing in on itself like a badly folded shirt.

There was someone I was dating then, Kazakh, and a whole friend group that basically revolved around t.A.T.u., which sounds ridiculous now but felt like everything at the time. 200 Km/H in the Wrong Lane was everywhere in my life. I could argue about the band like anyone else can, but there’s no getting around what they meant to me then. I watched Julia and Lena completely tank at Eurovision—actually painful to watch—and I still cared enough to buy the DVD mostly for the behind-the-scenes footage. When Dangerous and Moving came out, I remember feeling something like pride, like I’d made the right choice believing in them.

They were my favorite band in that way you have favorites when you’re young and everything feels permanent, weighty. I had the Fuck War t-shirt, same as theirs. Wore it like it meant something, like owning the same piece of fabric connected me to them somehow, made me part of something larger. Insufferable about it, completely.

Still have a soft spot for t.A.T.u. somewhere, wedged between all the indie rock and alternative I’ve accumulated, but the album sounds different when I play it now. It doesn’t carry the same weight. Hearing it again just reminds me I used to be capable of caring that much about anything, and I miss that version of myself.