Thinking about Alla Pugacheva’s departure from music (at least that is what she announced) it struck me that a large part of Russian estrada consist of Soviet era musicians who all are getting old (e.g. Sofiia Rotaru, Oleg Gazmanov, Valerii Leont’ev, Boris Moiseev).

On the other side, a young crop of singers have emerged – two with “close” ties to Pugacheva. One is the flamboyant Bulgarian born Filipp Kirkorov (born 1967), Pugacheva’s former husband (who the St. Petersburg based ska-punk group Banana Gang dedicated the song “Kirkoroff, welcome to hell” to).

The other is Maksim Galkin (born 1976), her current partner. A cabaretist, he has also attempted to sing – including this parody of Russia’s 2007 Eurovision contribution performed by Serebro. His version is a critique of Russian groups like Serebro singing in English (I especially like his Michael Jackson parody):

And this is the video clip from the original song, “Song 1”, sung by Serebro (here with Russian lyrics):

The video clip exists both with Russian and English lyrics (and can be downloaded from their website www.serebro.su/?go=video). Here is their contribution at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 which was sung in English:

Now, two years later one thing has changed: While Russia’s contribution to the 2009 contest sung by Anastasiia Prikhod’ko is being heavily debated in part due to the language of her lyrics, it is not English, but Ukrainian that is the problem (as well as the fact that she is from the Ukraine). But that is another story…