IT has been more than 20 years since Russian girlband Tatu came to worldwide attention for their onscreen kiss in the controversial music video for, All the Things She Said.
The song topped the charts in eight countries including the US and the duo became famous overnight, for outwardly promoting same sex relationships in the media.
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Band member Julia was just 17 when she shot to fame with her angelic face and pixie cut hairdo, alongside her right hand woman, Lena Katina, 39.
But aged 39, there is hardly a trace of the teenage pop sensation who took the music world by storm.
Nowadays, the singer is more heavily made up, has fuller lips, thick black eye brows and long shoulder length hair.
After the success of All the Things She Said, they achieved top 10 hits with Not Gonna Get us and All About Us and finished 3rd in the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest, after representing Russia with the song Don’t Believe, Don’t fear.
Despite shooting to fame on the vehicle of same sex relationships, Julia was condemned for a string of homophobic comments about gay men.
When asked on a TV show if she would banish son Samir if he turned out to be gay, Julia who herself claims to be bisexual, said: “Yes I would condemn him because I believe that a real man must be a real. A man has no right to be a fag.”
She added: “Two girls together, not the same as two men together. It seems to me that lesbians look aesthetically much nicer.
Later it transpired that the girl band had pretended to be in a lesbian relationship throughout their career, at the order of their record producer, who contrived the ‘lesbian schoolgirl’ concept to generate sales and interest.
The mother-of- two went through a tough time in 2012 when she underwent treatment in Moscow for Thyroid cancer.
In 2019 the cancer returned and she had a successful course of treatment once again, becoming cancer-free in October of that year.
Even today, the band still make regular appearances on Russian television and last performed together for a sporting event at the Gazprom stadium in St Petersburg in 2023.
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