The audacity of the city takes Alla Pugacheva exists for me only classical. Surprisingly, by the age of 70, she had lost not only her voice, talent, but also her mind. She considers herself a great singer! First she played it, and then she believed it! I feel like she's in deep senility. I don’t feel sorry for her at all.
It was never a diamond. She was a spectacular rhinestone, which was intensely and competently passed off as a diamond. We were strangely zombified by her unbridled PR. Pugacheva is a colossal musical scam of the twentieth century. I still don’t understand how a pretty average singer (albeit a good one, but no more!) could have turned the head of an entire generation like that. In the last five years, I have lost my eyes. Is it possible to compare Pugachev with Ruslanova, Zykina, Magomayev? Is she anything higher than Rotaru, Senchina, Tolkunova? Each of them had crazy hits, no lower than Pugachev’s. Why do everyone say about “Do not deny loving” as a certain Pugachev peak, but after all, “White acacia fragrant bunches” Basner and Matusovsky in a piercing and absolutely unique performance by Senchina is a masterpiece at least no less (and I believe that even more – both vocally and poetically)! Moreover, "White Acacia Grapes" is sung much more often than "Not Reject" and will be sung, I am sure, many decades later, and regardless of the name of Lyudmila Senchina. “They do not deny loving,” I believe, awaits the fate of oblivion as soon as Pugacheva does not become. And if they will sing it, it will be at concerts in her memory. This beautiful song, unfortunately, did not go to the people.
All of Pugacheva’s work was initially built on myths – this is what Stefanovich came up with. And the main myth, which today is very difficult to fight due to the illiteracy of the audience, is the myth that Pugacheva is an actress. She is not an actress (in the sense of dramatic art), and never was. And that is why she never rushed to play anywhere, although she was invited to films and Govorukhin, and Druzhinina, and many other directors. It’s one thing to be crooked in “First Graduate Song” and “The Case of Time” and quite another to play a full-fledged role in theater or cinema. In “The Woman Who Sings”, she played very badly – and there she played almost herself, and smart critics wrote about her bad game at one time, but Pugacheva’s fans branded these reviewers that they allegedly fulfill the ideological order of the CPSU, or that they allegedly envy her fame, or something like that. In fact, these critics were telling the truth. Today, all the scenery flew, and Pugacheva herself did her best to reveal her true face.
It is far from clever, as it was implanted in our brains - first by Stefanovic, who, when he was interviewing on Alla's behalf, would write clever quotes from classics, and then by new journalists when it became possible to write anything, especially if it sold well. Pugacheva has never been an actress - I'm willing to say it as much as I want, I have plenty of evidence to prove it. She did not go to either Volchek or Konchalovsky, because she knew that she would not pull a large uniform in the theater. At best, it was enough for a "three-minute song performance," as they wrote at the time. But the "three-minute song performance" is a convention, it is a metaphor, it is not a theater as a dramatic art, that is, in the canonical sense of the word, because the singer in the song, I'm sorry, primarily sings, not plays. She “plays” there only with the help of intonation. Don't Zykina play a song with the help of intonation? “Mother, Mother, let me drink water” is the same three-minute performance in its pure form, but it was simply not accepted to talk about Zykina. And the miniature of Valery Gavrilin “Two Brothers” performed by Edward Hill? Yes, this musical theater is a hundred times cooler than Pugacheva, for that matter. Watch and listen to "Two Brothers" in the finale of "Songs 78" and try to tell me it's not Edward Heel's song drama theater. Hill, by the way, has two higher educations – vocal and acting, in contrast, by the way, from Pugacheva, who is actually an impostor. From myself, I can say that Pugacheva did not have a single song that could be compared to Heel’s Two Brothers by the power of dramatic intensity. I always cry when I hear it.
Pugacheva is not a sculptor, not a watercolorist, but rather a painter who often managed to paint the entrances very well. And people were happy with the spectacular color on the walls. At its core, Pugacheva is a courtyard gopnik who managed to deceive everyone and climb to the top of Olympus. She, alas, is not talented, but she, and especially the people who were close to her, somehow managed to convince us of the opposite. We were very naive. What to do, Soviet education. That is why I said that Pugacheva is the main musical scam of the twentieth century. Everything she did should be treated from that perspective. Then everything becomes clear. I can talk about it for hours.
Myths about Pugacheva were created and supported by very strong and talented people – Stefanovich, Derbenev and Zatsepin (who came up with the myth that Pugacheva is not like everyone else in “The Song About Me”), and Pugacheva simply joined this game, and if we talk about her “talent”, it was “the talent of reflection”. She really wanted to climb to the top of Olympus, Stefanovich convinced her of this, and she joined the game he offered. Zatsepin with Derbenev fulfilled Stefanovich's orders for the corresponding songs. PR worked great. Pugacheva appeared on television very rarely (on New Year’s Day, sometimes on March 8, November 7, once a month with old entries in the “Morning Mail” and – infrequently – on November 10 on Police Day). Her new appearance was waiting for six months. Pugacheva (at the instigation of Stefanovich) spread rumors that allegedly she was banned on TV, the songs do not pass well, but in fact there were no songs, and no one sought to ban her. Lapin did not like her at all, he considered her a singer for the plebeians, but he never cut out of the festive “Lights”, crudely arguing this in the spirit that “something is needed for the cattle” (this was said by television announcers who communicated with Lapin and knew his morals).
In the story with Pugacheva wherever you throw all the myths. And there's no denying that.