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- "The era of information fraudsters is being followed by the era of fraudulent musicians"
"The era of information fraudsters is being followed by the era of fraudulent musicians"
Singer Tosya Chaikina, whose song "Unscrupulous" became the hallmark of the TV series of the same name, continues to master cinema. In the new project "We're Fucked" she appeared as an actress — she played herself. In an interview with Izvestia, Tosya Chaikina told why she believes that the era of artificial intelligence gives birth to "fraudulent musicians," how Dima Bilan helped her move to Moscow and gain a foothold in the industry, what kind of heroine she dreams of playing on the screen, and why the new album will be an attempt for her to return to the main thing - making music.
"I decided to improvise and broke through the ceiling in the classroom"
— Your tracks and soundtracks have already become part of Russian movies and TV series. But in the project "We're Fucked" you found yourself on the other side of the frame not just as a musician, but as an actress who played herself. Tell us about this experience.
— This is not my first such experience. Before that, I appeared in movies in the cameo format — I played myself. It all started with a short film about St. Petersburg. I also starred in Unscrupulous, but this scene wasn't included in the final cut, but my name remained in the credits.
— Did the filming process surprise you in any way? Maybe there was something unexpected in the movie?
— In the movies, everything is always expected. You come in, make up, and then you wait a very, very long time. This is the base. In this regard, I don't envy the actors: waiting drains a huge amount of energy, and at some point you can just burn out.
— So far, you're only playing yourself in the movie. Would you like to get a full-fledged dramatic role?
— I wanted to! I even recorded self—auditions for a movie and a TV series - I shot the video myself, and then I also came to a face-to-face casting. It was incredibly interesting to me, because this role is for resistance. The character is my complete antagonist: a woman in her 30s who has lost her mind. To play such a thing is pure delight. I really like Charlize Theron in the thriller "Monster", for which she gained 15 kg and where she played a maniac. This is not a role, but a gift for an actress.
Charlize Theron in the thriller "Monster"
But it's important to keep yourself in the frame and get to know other facets of your self. I have a base: when I studied at the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Music College, we taught acting, stage movement and stage speech. I remember, at one of the exams, I decided to improvise — I jumped on the ballet machine, caught on the curtain and ... broke through the ceiling in the classroom! I got a B for that passage, not an A, because I cracked up and started laughing. Well, really, it was very funny!
"They are driven into certain limits for a fee"
— Your track "Unscrupulous" has become the hallmark of the TV series of the same name. And when you write music specifically for a movie or show, how much are you limited by the script? Do you have to adapt to other people's tasks?
— There are several job options in the film industry. The first is when your already finished, previously created composition is simply bought for use in a painting. But there's another side to the coin — when people come to you and say, "We really like what you're doing. Let's create something exclusive for our series, show or movie." And it's always a cool experience! Yes, they force you into certain limits for a fee, they set you a clear task, but I always get a kick out of it. It's a definite quest and a little adventure.
Actually, I have a global dream — to write a soundtrack for an entire movie. Create the entire instrumental, the main leitmotif, the individual themes of the characters and intertwine everything with each other. It would be incredibly interesting for me to implement this.
— After all, you had experience working with Chinese film producers — your composition "Hope" became the soundtrack to the Chinese film "Disappeared in the Stars"...
— Everything happened thanks to the guys from the Art House company, who suggested making such a cool collaboration. They were the ones who brought this movie to Russia. In the process, the idea came up to make my song the official soundtrack, so that it would sound at the very beginning of the film. We have successfully implemented this specifically for domestic rental.
— Has the Chinese side offered to continue cooperation?
— This could have happened, but at that time I had a hectic work schedule.
— Do you have any professional guidelines among film composers?
— If we take the legends, the music of Mikael Tariverdiev and Andrey Petrov is very important to me. Among modern authors, I was once hooked by the music for Anna Melikyan's film "The Mermaid" (it was even nominated for an Oscar) — there is a wonderful soundtrack by Igor Vdovin.
I also consider Kirill Pirogov's music for the film "Peter FM" to be one of the best soundtracks on planet Earth. He's an amazing actor, he played a supporting role there, and he's my crush. I dream of meeting this man. And to do everything so that his music for the film lives on and that as many people as possible find out about it.
A shot from Peter FM with Kirill Pirogov
— So you're a bit of a missionary?
— Just a little bit. There's music that does something to you on a molecular level - it's very cool, transformational stuff. But in general, I like to suffer when my soul hurts.
"If you wear a mask all the time, sooner or later it will start to 'float'
— Why aren't you afraid to be weak?
— Because if you constantly wear a mask, sooner or later it will start to "float". You can't keep your face in one fixed position all your life — your muscles will just get tired.
For me, sincerity has always been one of the main human values. I've been like this since I was born. As a child, I was often reproached: "You take everything too personally," "You're too emotional," "You need to be stronger and stop crying over nothing." But I don't owe anyone anything, I'm just like that.
If I had a more stable mind or if I wasn't a person with such thin skin, I probably wouldn't be able to empathize with people so deeply. And I definitely wouldn't be able to feel the music the way I feel it now.
Being hypersensitive is both a gift and a curse. On the one hand, you're incredibly good at reading people and their emotions, but on the other, you're letting too much pain go through you. But it's this vulnerability that makes my work real.
But at the same time, with this sensitivity, you can be very lonely. A lot of pain is born from this. But to tolerate it, to keep silent about what is wrong with you, and to pretend that everything is fine is a destructive path that eventually destroys a person from the inside and leads to serious illnesses.
— There is an opinion that in the public space, an artist is obliged to radiate one hundred percent success: to say that everything is "awesome", rent Rolls-Royces, rent expensive outfits from friends and pretend that this is his own luxurious life. How do you feel about such a demonstration?
— It seems to me that there are always deep narcissistic traumas behind this. When I think about people who live exclusively for show, the first thing that comes to mind is the infomachers. They cheat people out of a lot of money, and then burn it off quickly, not knowing how to create or multiply. They show, "Look at the house I rent, the car I drive!" But we can see that in the end, such stories don't end well.
Of course, we are all traumatized to one degree or another. But when a person becomes obsessed with proving to the world that he is the coolest, most successful and the best, this is a clear sign that he was disliked as a child. Perhaps his parents were too strict with him, devalued him, or abused him. And now, through demonstrative success, psychological defense mechanisms are being activated: banal substitution and an attempt to compensate for old grievances.
"I moved to Moscow from St. Petersburg largely thanks to Bilan"
— When did you realize that you didn't just want to perform music, but create it yourself?
— Actually, I just never wanted to fulfill someone else's will, I wasn't particularly interested in singing at someone's behest. Of course, I have strong genetics and a natural predisposition to sing well — this vocal foundation has been laid in me since I was 15 years old.
But in my second year of college, I discovered composing music and realized that I always wanted to create my own. After the first song I wrote, I realized that I had found myself. I didn't give a damn if it would bring money or success, I had a reinforced concrete confidence inside that I would succeed. And although at that time there were no prerequisites at all for the fact that the project, assembled literally on the knee, would somehow unwind, in the end everything turned around.
— And when you first started, could you at least secretly dream that you would write songs for Dima Bilan?
— I remember watching him perform at the Eurovision Song Contest as a child, I think it was the year he took second place. Looking at the screen, I thought: "Damn, I really want to meet you! You're a real firefly."
Years later, we got to know each other, and I was happy to realize that the children's chuika had not deceived me. Time has shown that Dima is exactly the kind of person I imagined him to be. But then, as a child, I couldn't imagine writing tracks for him, of course.
— And how did Dima rate your work?
— We became very good friends in 2019, and he strongly supported me. Dima constantly, absolutely sincerely and on his own initiative, promoted me on his social networks. Sometimes I was even surprised.: "My God, Dima, why do I need so many stories?"
Thanks to him, I have gained acquaintances in the musical environment, met a lot of cool artists. Dima had a huge impact on my development in the industry, and I will always be grateful to him for that. And I moved to Moscow from St. Petersburg in many ways thanks to him: I wrote a song for him, he liked it, and the money I earned from it allowed me to move to the capital.
"Now I'm going to look like a grumpy granny"
— You also had a project related to Anna Akhmatova. Is this some kind of tribute? What is this story?
— Yes, the VK team gathered musicians, and together we recorded our versions of songs based on Anna Akhmatova's poems. I think this is an amazing initiative.
There was another similar cool project dedicated to Osip Mandelstam, where Sirotkin, IOWA and other artists sang. Such tributes help a young audience to get into classical poetry, it is a way to keep it in a modern context, to capture what was created by great authors.
For this project, I wrote a song based on a poem by Akhmatova, and a musician from my team added a live instrumental. The track eventually became part of my regular concert repertoire.
— How do you feel about the creative mat?
— I think there are too many mats, even in my personal space. Now I'm going to look like a grumpy grandmother, but the kids are swearing a lot today. This has become a kind of norm. I don't like it when you hear a foul word or when people swear loudly in public places, not noticing the children around and not thinking about the boundaries of others. Although I'm still that shoemaker myself! But now I try not to clog up my speech, precisely because it has become a universal norm.
— They say you are writing a new album that will be absolutely unlike anything else. Does it already have a name?
— There is no specific name yet. My last album was released in 2020 — I recorded it in GarageBand right on my iPhone. In six years, everything has changed a lot in the industry: today, releasing longplays is the lot of fearless people. The audience's focus is blurred, everyone listens to only one or two "focus tracks" from the playlists, and the rest of the material goes unnoticed. Right now, I want you to pay attention to every song.
I've accumulated a lot of material over the last couple of years, but I rarely released new items. I've been playing the role of a touring artist with one program for a while and I'm tired of it. There was a feeling that I had moved away from my main mission — to create music, so now I really want to resume this flow.
— How do you feel about AI in music? Is this technology capable of catching on, and will composing using a computer become easier?
— I don't use neural networks in my work. But if we talk about the same music generators like Suno, then following the era of information scammers, the era of fraudulent musicians is now coming. People just generate tracks and pass them off as their creativity.
— How do you use the lull in the tour schedule?
— I haven't had many performances in the last seven months due to the cancellation of concerts, but I have time to sit down in the studio and work hard on finalizing the accumulated material - there is really a lot of it now.
I returned to DJing seven years later. I want to share not only my work, but also all the music that is currently playing in my ears. DJ sets are always fun, cool, and for me it's a special kind of enjoyment.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
