Below is a full translation of the Odnajdi YouTube channels’ video – “Ludi Invalidi – The Creation and Commercial Failure of the Album”, featuring members of the previous t.A.T.u. team as well as members from the Russian music industry.

Elena Kiper (Producer, songwriter):
According to psychologists, black and yellow are the colors associated with sickness. That is the psychology of the colors. I found this out much later after the release of the album. For me this is sick, from the point of view of the time and the relationships in the project. Because there were endless conflicts, lawsuits, figuring out who gets what percentage, who owns what, who owns the brand. So, this is a sad album.

Sergei Galoyan (Producer, songwriter):
A team came together that was unique, for the first album, and there were pieces of it left on the second album. Valery Polienko, Alexander Voitinsky, Elena Kiper. We were not systematic people. The system that was in place then did not let us in. We broke the system and that is why we became free. We dictated which tracks would go out, it was not the system dictating it to us, nor the radio. We said, “this is what is cool”, and they would play that music.

Elena Kiper:
These were the 2000’s. This was change, just like now we are in a time of paradigm change. Back then, in the 2000s, it was the same thing. Everything change completely, the whole world change. But it lasted 10 years. In my opinion we were reflecting the mood of that time. The desire to cross the line. We just aligned with that time, we were just extremely relevant.

Oleg Borschevskiy:
All of the pop music which is on edge, is all somewhere from there, from t.A.T.u. Nichya, the band, of course correlates with t.A.T.u. and it cannot not correlate because one of the main authors for t.A.T.u. was an author, singer and member of Nichya.

Elena Kiper:
We told them what to say, how to say it, because they did not know what to do.

Sergei Galoyan:
Ivan was a psychologist at that time. Your bring him and idea and he would cultivate it. He not only brought us together, but he knew what was cool.

Alexei Romanof (Singer, songwriter, member of the bands Amega and Vintage):
I felt sympathy for both, and to their producer, Ivan Shapovalov. Creative sympathy, for all their scandalousness, for them being the first ones in this. This is done today by everyone, over and over. What made them different from many others, especially those around now, was that behind their scandalousness stood fundamentally fantastic music.

Anna Pletneva (Member of the band Vintage):
This song [Devochki Lunatiki] absolutely has a t.A.T.u. vibe. Vintage and t.A.T.u. spoke about what bothered us without fear. About societal problems. The song Devochki Lunatiki it’s about…well, you understand what it’s about (prostitution).

Sergei Galoyan:
There was a very long pause after the first album was released. The second album should have been released right away. There was a year which was lost with the Podnebesnaya show.

Elena Kiper:
Clip from Anatomy of t.A.T.u. – …”the second album, even if they sing in it, or talk, or cry through it, or…something will be heard there. Oh, even an album of silence by t.A.T.u. will be used as a commercial success!”

Did I say this on Manskiy’s reality show? Because I understood the demand that was there. We designed such a huge number of products – books, journals…merch was not a thing yet, but I knew that everything would be bought up as soon as we released it on the market. The strength and magnitude of fame drove everyone to lose their minds. It was possible to remain in the realization of creative plans. Why I designate it as an album of silence is because they had nothing to do during Podnebesnaya.

Sergei Galoyan:
The channel STS gave a huge budget to create this reality show. But they did not take into account that Ivan is not a musician and did not write music. He tried to get people off the street. Nothing worked out for him because all the key people left.

Valeriy Polienko (Director, song author):
It was leisurely, relaxed, artistic activity, a bohemian existence which can be replaced by a process. I am not saying that everyone needs to lock themselves in a studio. You can do it this way or that way. But there, there were no ideas. Guys were just sitting behind a table, smoked and drank coffee or not coffee. It was just conversations.

Elena Kiper:
I do not like the name [Ludi Invalidi] at all. However, Alex Volk…he opened up the song for me. I did not want to know the second album at all. Not to hear it, not to know it, not to get near it. Someone sang Ludi Invalidi for the tribute, and here I opened myself up to the track because of course without love people are invalids. It is an important slogan but I did not hear it.

Sergei Galoyan:
Why was that song necessary? In my eyes and my taste, it is not at all the right sound which was being created, it was not the right message. Why would you offend handicapped people? For me it was not a song for the global level, it was a song for Igorek’s level, a performer that was around before. He would have performed that song very well. t.A.T.u. sings “Ludi Invalidi” and it starts a scandal, and one that is not a PR-related one, it was one that truly offended people.

Valeriy Polienko:
It is understood that the lyrics in the song are not offensive in their context. People are worse than the handicapped, to be honest.

Sergei Galoyan:
The English version of this song is meaningless because it is not material that is for a global level. Kosmos, Sacrifice, All About Us….even Vsya Moya Lyubov’, which is incredible. And in between them is some strange synthesizer, a confusing beat. The song is local. What does it have to with an English version? I have not come across Russian settlements in the Western world while I was there.

Elena Kiper:
When I left I understood that Ivan did not know what to do going forward because he was in his own world. But I did meet with Boris Renski and we had a discussion. Because I left during a conflict with Ivan and we had long meetings about how to divide the project, who will be directing the project. Boris asked me,”What do you think about making a new album?”. I was not very interested, I did not want to work with the project any longer. I was no longer interested because it left a bad taste in my mouth after all the conflicts. So I said, “You just need to find songs overseas”, that their voices can outdo ABBA’s voices. ABBA was a mega-top project during its time. We know that the best always comes back around and that the best can be worked with. All About Us, in my eyes, is a reincarnation of ABBA. Boris got this song from Martin Kierszenbaum and Trevor Horn.

Sergei Galoyan:
It is very commercial, it does not sound like t.A.T.u. very much. It is a more mainstream sound and there is a slight deviation from the concept of the second album.

I was disappointed in Russian show-business, you could say, due to the drama with Ivan, and was living in London. In the winter or spring I got a call from Martin Kierszenbaum who said, “We are trying to bring t.A.T.u. back and need to make a second album. Do you have any ideas?”. I had a bunch of ideas, but I asked him if Ivan was still in the project. I told him, “I am not going to work with him. Please do not call me about this topic anymore”. Closer to the summer I got a call from Boris who said, “We are inviting you to Moscow just for a dinner”. I flew in and the girls were at the restaurant with Boris, where there was the dance ritual of asking me about the ideas that I had. I asked about Ivan and they told me he was no longer in the project. I did not have anything against Julia and Lena and I only have warm and friendly feelings toward Boris, so I had nothing to stop me from working on the second album. We started recording demos and I worked all summer on new material. We went to Los Angeles and wrote our second album at The Village Studio, and wrote our second album at the same time as a bunch of other cool artists…Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses, Taylor Swift, Destiny’s Child, Limp Bizkit.

During the second album, Julia was already…I will say a phrase, and Julia please don’t be upset with me for it, but in terms of a singer she was already handicapped.

Elena Kiper:
Julia was very active in trying to heal her voice, in different parts of the world.

Sergei Galoyan:
We took her to the best Hollywood doctors. They gave her shots, inhalations, vocal warm-ups. Half of Hollywood worked on saving Julia’s voice. We would go to her teacher, whose name I do not remember now, who had several parrots that he taught to sing, which he also saved. But it did not work with Julia because her voice was so severely damaged, to the point of a handicap.

We spent very long sessions at the studio, recording her phrase by phrase. Even after I left, Martin Kierszenbaum re-recorded some things which did not work out for me, but it was impossible. And at the same time there was pressure from the label that the album needed to be released. It was already delayed by a year.

She was young, Ivan was managing her. Ivan was a grown man who should have been following her and controlling these moments. He should have told her not to scream during concerts…or hire another girl who would have screamed for her during concerts. But they sunk into a chaos where no one was responsible for anything. And so they got to a point where they screamed so much that it ended up in a handicap.

Valeriy Polienko:
The song Ti Soglasna is, forgive my memory, but is a song left over from the first album. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. It was not written for the second album, it was just included.

Sergei Galoyan:
In the second album there was not a single idea which would have been used in the first.

Valeriy Polienko:
If we are talking about the album, there are two songs…Well there are three. But the third song, Vsya Moya Lyubov’, was made very separately…it is utilitarian, for this thing. But there are two architectural, load-bearing songs – Kosmos, which we created with Sergei Galoyan, and Obezyanka Nol’.

Sergei Galoyan:
They are wonderful singers. They are incredibly technical singers. They flourished in the processed. They went to lessons, they picked up a lot of new things. But unfortunately, physically, Julia’s voice was broken. In the line, “V kosmose vstretimsya / (In space we will meet)” the part “V ko- / (in spa-)” I constructed from about 10 different phrases. I think I had 20-25 takes with Julia and where I thought she hit the note, I would flag it, take a piece…and if the parts would not work together then Julia would come in the next day and do another 20 takes.

I cannot live with this, the two songs, Kosmos and Vsya Moya Lyubov’…it is awful and I had a lot of questions and began to get angry at this subject, like, “Guys, you are hiring me to do music and not letting me finish it”. Before the mixing [of the songs], they bought me a ticket out of Los Angeles and told me, “If you want to stay you will have to pay for it yourself, but here is a ticket we bought you”. A motel there costs $500 a night and I said I would not stay. I asked, “how are we going to mix everything?” and they said, “we will do it”. Robert Orton did the mixing. Not a single phone call from him, no communication. Then, when they sent me the material which they mixed, I said, “What did you do here?…” For example, in my version of the song Vsya Moya Lyubov’, in the part where Julia begins to scream, the echo was supposed to loop and it was supposed to last a minute. But they just did it so she screams and that’s it. And the drums in that section were supposed to be distorted. In Kosmos they also did something else during the bridge, not what I had thought to do. They also replaced the melody there because Julia could not scream…also without my permission. It’s like, my artistic material is being owned by other people.

When I worked on Novaya Model’ I was living in London. My process is like this – when I lay down the base of the track and the melody becomes clear to me, it captivates me so much that I cannot stop. I sit down in the morning and work the whole day on the track. And I love when it plays loudly through large speakers. So, as usual, I laid down the base and started working on the track, constantly playing it, listening to it and changing things. And I heard a loud banging on my door in the evening. I got scared and asked who was there. And he began telling me, in English, “Dude, you have an awesome song, but my kids cannot listen to this anymore! I cannot take it anymore, you’ve played it like 1,000 times!”.

At first the song had these lyrics:

“The headlines sever
But words are idle
For kissing clever
On auto-pilot

Go and tear it up
Wanna start again
This is a revision
To everything
Go and cross it out
Wanna start anew
Set the record straight
With version number two”

Valeriy Polienko:
[Nichya] – This is a very strange song. I don’t know, it is some piece of my song which was stitched together with another song. I look at the song Nichya as a secondary song to a very good one in this palette, which is Polchasa. If you compare Polchasa and Nichya, it is clear that [Nichya] should be put in the garbage.

Sergei Galoyan:
From Interscope’s artists and repertoire division there was Martin Kierszenbaum – he got into the second album with his songs. He wrote the lyrics to Sacrifice. Martin and I agreed that we are starting with Sacrifice. I remember how I wrote this song. I was in London, with a guitar, and thought up the guitar riff. Then I got the idea for the melody and realized it is my t.A.T.u.-style melody, the one that I helped grow, plus a rock sound, the one that I want for this album. And I realized that it would be an awesome first single.

Why the song did not become a single is because Martin and I had a small conflict because he wanted to have more of an influence on the creative direction of the band. But he did not create the band, Valeriy Polienko, Elena Kiper and I did along with Ivan Shapovalov. Why is some American going to tell us what lyrics to sing or anything else? I lost my temper a little bit and I guess they were not used to this sort of thing, so in the end all the singles were not mine. Gomenasai was his, an awful song. I hate it. It is not t.A.T.u. It is college band, I don’t know, but it is definitely not t.A.T.u. Compare Gomenasai with All About Us or Kosmos, or Obezyanka Nol’…This super-depression versus the girls cutely singing “Gomenasai…”. It is clear why it was done, but I do not think you ever need to apologize, especially for a band like t.A.T.u., which is the most scandalous band in the world. To apologize in front of the premiere of Japan or in front of Takashi or whatever his name is?

With the second album my job was to take the band to the level of the following ten albums. And so I picked out the sound that would be more fitting for a time of relevancy, so to speak.

While I am living in London I am working with local producers like Youth, the previous bassists from Killing Joke, and Paul McCartney’s producer, and a bunch of other iconic British bands. I got a lot of advice from them. There was this one anonymous guy that would come to me in the morning in a fairly sober state, add a little something to his cigarette, and walk around [in an altered state] toward the evening and it was not possible to talk to him. But he is a very smart and progressive guy and he told me something one time – that live instruments last longer, that it is more respectable, that’s what British pop is. It is a style of music with a message that it is not a one-time thing, that we are declaring the level of ABBA…that we will be working for years to come.

Martin is Sting’s friend and manager. We were discussing something with Martin and he said, “Sergio, what do you think of Sting?”, and I said, “He is iconic”. He said, “I can call New York now and he will record the bass”. I said, “Could it please be on one of my tracks?” and he said, “No, it will be on one of mine”. So I said, “Well, at least on yours then”. Martin flew to New York from Los Angeles and they recorded the bass part [of Friend or Foe] in the studio.

Elena Kiper:
International laws are made in a way so that foreign artist do not sell, and have never sold, songs in alienation. But it is practiced in [Russia]. The song is taken, and that is it – the authors do not have any relation to it and do not make a single dollar from it in royalties. International laws do not allow this. That is why our rights remained, thanks to the project reaching an international level. This is where very big questions appeared. Agreements were made at the beginning, but not according to the rules of international law. With every single iteration and re-make, I thankfully have a contract that has implications. I always write in our chat, “Do you know which artist will be singing our song now?”. Then agreements start for things like who will participate, how it will be laid out. And for Halsey we all got an international premium because Halsey was completely different.

Sergei Galoyan:
I will tell you a secret. This happened when Martin invited me to work on Lady Gaga’s first album and we were writing it. Robert Orton was our sound engineer. If I am the producer then my influence needs to be until the end, at least up until the mastering. And if you do not let the producer–which was done not by him but by Boris Renski and the label, who did not permit me to. When I created the material for the second album and we had already recorded in the studio and I had these huge hard drives. I was invited to a hotel to discuss things. I walked into the hotel and they told me to bring the hard drives, which I did. They close the door behind me and I understood something odd was happening. I came by myself. There was Boris Renski, someone else, I think it was his lawyer named William. And he says, “Sergei, we want to tell you that we will not let you out of this room until you hand over the hard drives and sign these papers”. I told them that I would not give them anything or sign anything and they said they would keep me there until I did. I saw there for about an hour and a half and then I thought, “Why do I need to be connected with you?”, so I signed, gave them everything, and that’s it. They bought me a plane ticket and I flew out. They had paranoia then because they knew how the first album ended. They were expecting me to just steal the material. But to do what with it?…It is paranoia at the level of craziness.

We did not discuss anything with [the girls], so they were just the performers. They would come to the studio, I would give them a task, I would correct them in the process. We only discussed the singing portion together, but I was the one trusted with music concept and Valeriy wrote the Russian lyrics.

Valeriy Polienko:
My co-author and good friend, who I invited into the t.A.T.u. team, Leonid Alexandrovsky, is a Russian-English poet. If not for his translations then…He is a person behind the scenes who did so much, he is just a modest person.

Sergei Galoyan:
I speak to young people now and ask them which album they like more. They all say the second album for some reason. These are regular people, not professionals. Even professionals say this. In that moment people were not able to fully taste the spices which we infused, that tarragon which may not have been known in terms of a musical sound. For people listening to Ivanushki International or Igorek, maybe for them it was too fast. But we were broadcasting to a worldwide audience, we removed not only the narrow Russian layer. But, I don’t know, maybe it was a mistake on my part, or on ours, to create this specific sound. But the communication which I get now from young people tells me that we did everything correctly and the people who are above a mid-mental capacity love smarter material.

There was a tour, there were sales, there were platinum and gold records, but the label was not as interested in a third album. Even though, according to the contract, those albums should have been made.

Valeriy Polienko:
[In the third album] there are a few of my songs, yes. I wrote 220. This is a very strange song which was written– This was a period when Ivan was eliminated and things went completely sideways. 220 is a funny song. Horrible.

Sergei Galoyan:
They called me and said they were planning a third album and I said, “Why?”. They said, “Well, we need to. Our contract with Interscope is requiring it”. I told them that I only had one song for them, which I gave to them for free to sing – Marsianskiye Glaza, a cool song.

We were planning a t.A.T.u. tribute, which happened in 2022, which had many talented people that we got to meet. There was one girl named Rikani and she turned out to be a very famous anime director in our country. We began to talk and she said she had a dream to make an anime about t.A.T.u. I told her I had the same dream, but for 14 years, if not longer, no one worked on it. She said, “Let’s do it” and I said, “No problem”. I told her I could write the music for it and she said that would be ideal, and I wrote the track Sargas. I called someone I knew in Los Angeles and gave them the idea that this could be put on Netflix. I showed them the pilot and discussions started. The music video was released 02/02/2022 – exactly 22 days before the start of all these events (referring to the war). While they had that video our world went crazy and they refused to communicate with us further.

Elena Kiper:
We can discuss topic this a lot – how conflicts occur and how what is hidden from us happens. We can assume and speculate, and I honestly do not want to get into this. It it just that for some unclear reason they announced to the whole market that the rights do not belong to us, even though we are the authors. I will honestly say that I do not have a relationship with either of the singers, even though I had a good relationship with both of them for a long time, right up until 2014 when that conflict happened.

Sergei Galoyan:
What happened with the tribute? I can explain it easily. I was talking about this idea for years. I guess people heard about it somewhere and came to us. We got the chance to do this tribute. And when people hear that there is an opportunity to do something cool they want money right away. And when we started to form it into something more solid. We talked to the artists and came up with the tracklist, booked the venue, invested a lot of our energy and resources. We then went to Julia and Lena. We told them, “Girls, this is a tribute to our songs and we want you to also be part of it. And not as singers, but at least to be in the venue and do interviews”. And they began to give us such rates that we could not afford it. So it was either to pay just Lena so that she could just come out and show her face, which means half of the artists would need to be discarded. Or say, “Lena, we do not need you in this tribute”, but half of the artists can then participate in the event. So, thinking rationally, we said to Lena that we cannot meet her demands. And once she heard this, there were very treacherous actions from Lena’s manager. She began to tell Lena that she should record accusatory videos, they began dragging us through the mud, only because we cannot afford her rate. This did not make sense in my head at all. They tried to do everything – they called the venue, they sent law enforcement there to talk to us to try to stop the tribute. It came to a point where I had to calm them down, which meant forbidding Lena to sing my songs. And even that was a notice…not a threat, but a threat as a reply to their thousands of threats, to say that I can go about it this way. Although, I did not file a lawsuit. I just posted an official letter from a lawyer, but did not do anything past that. I’ll tell you a secret – she can still perform my songs, and she was never forbidden officially against anything. She just does not sing very well lately…

We created a tribute for these songs…a tribute is when you honor something.

Elena Kiper:
This is where we were not too late because in the tribute we had a worldwide list of participants and that is very valuable…I loved how the artists from other countries sang. We had to go there, we had to do it so that it remained.

Oleg Borschevskiy:
This was a totally new energy – musical, poetic, and more. I think it gave a huge push to the full music story in Russia, and not just Russia, as we know.

Anna Pletneva:
Of course we influence one another…or influenced, back then, since there is no more t.A.T.u. now, unfortunately. And now it is no longer possible, and that is very sad.

Alexei Romanof:
I think both of the girls themselves do not fully grasp what they are doing, what they did.

Sergei Galoyan:
It is a unique project which we cannot replicate, which is impossible to catch up to and to outdo. All of its participants, including Elena Kiper, Ivan Shapovalov, and the girls, will be perceived as a part of this project. When we worked on the project it was a family for me.

Valeriy Polienko:
There is nothing legendary. I think that either the composition of chants or Alla Pugacheva kissing Sofia Rotaru when singing Nas Ne Dagoniat, or the girls themselves…it is just a passing of time. It is not worth observing. It is not really a culturological process. I think that’s the story.