How did they become Smash?

[Headnote: The Russian pop duo Smash consists of Vladimir Topalov, 18, and Sergey Lazarev, 21, cousins and best friends, both of whom were in Manila recently to promote their first album Freeway. The following interview took place at the Moonsoon Restaurant in Linden Court.]

Neither boy has had a proper breakfast although it is close to noontime. Vladimir and Sergey have just finished a longish shoot for MTV. Notwithstanding that, they look perfectly powdered and properly pepped up. The only sign of stress is Vladimir’s wrenching a fork out of shape about midway in the interview, and that’s probably because he has been doing most of the talking since they arrived last Friday.

Sergey, he says, is angry, "because if he wants to say something, he’ll say it in Russian and I translate it." (The situation is like that in a beauty pageant, except that both interpreter and candidate are pretty.) Sergey’s temper is duly noted in the press kit: "If I don’t like something," the bio quotes him, "I start getting really mad, throw things around and get completely out of control." His only "disruptive" moment, however, is when he interrupts Vladimir and asks me, pointing at my notebook, "You like Harry Potter?"

"Yes, and these are Harry Potter glasses."

"Are they? I like Harry Potter . . ."

"I like Tom and Jerry," is Vladimir’s reply. "That’s the best."

The two boys have been singing together since childhood. They were part of a children’s group called Neposedi ("It means like a little kid who just can’t sit still in one place"), which Vladimir remembers as "like a music school, tough and great." But when Neposedi grew to be 120-kid-strong, Vladimir and Sergey decided to leave it.

That they came to be called "Smash" probably had something to do with Simon Napier Bell, their manager then (Vladimir’s father manages the boys now). Bell had, in the ‘80s, discovered Wham and thought that the boys could be another George Michael and Andrew Ridgely. "He saw the same thing in us as in Wham," explained Vladimir, "two good guys, two brothers, two good friends, who stick together."

The chemistry is evident, especially in the way they sometimes finish each other’s sentences (words in one language trailing words in the other), or in the way they speak or write of each other ("Sergey taught me to widen my outlook," says Vladimir, and in the liner notes of their CD, Sergey thanks his cousin "for love and help"), or in the way they work together ("All the work we do, we do together. . . . If he has the opportunity to give more input in something then he does it. If I have the opportunity, I do it").

But what of the music? Freeway, all of whose tracks but one are in English, is predominantly pop and dance; and if one didn’t know that Vladimir and Sergey were Russian, one would think that Louis Walsh had manufactured yet another boy band. If the boys are sounding like N’Sync (in, e.g., Talk to Me or The Real Thing) or Savage Garden (in The One to Cry), they are doing a Cher or Kylie Minogue (in Freeway and Gonna Be Our Night).

The boys don’t mind such comparisons (which are not intended to be disparaging). In fact, they want to avoid being labeled "Russian." "You don’t want to hear Russian music," says Sergey, "because it’s more than bad." He adds, "We wanted to get away from Russia. In the music business, Russia is left out. You can say ‘UK pop’ or ‘American R&B,’ but you can’t say ‘Russian rock’." And what is contemporary Russian pop music like? "It’s like the European pop music of the ’70s and ’80s. That’s the sound. Nothing has changed. It’s bad."

No, they are not rejecting their ethnicity. "Take N’Sync," explains Vladimir. "Only after they had become popular by singing in the same style as the Backstreet Boys did they start making something different. If no one knew Justin Timberlake and he came out with the album Justified, I’m not sure that he’ll be as popular now." When they secure more leverage, they can begin to take more risks–turning to traditional Russian material, for example, or drawing from the rich tradition of Russian classical music: "Using Rimsy-Korsakov," says Vladimir, "that’s a good idea, but that might go in the second album, not in the first." (The second album–"more R&B, more soul"–might come out in November.)

Sergey sees the move as a way of educating the Russian audience: "If the audience wants a Russian song, we do a Russian song. But after that, we do a few English songs. And the English songs are much more high level than the Russian. They think, ‘I like the Russian songs of Smash, so the English songs must be good.’ And they start to listen, and they start to get used to a new sound."

Ironically, the song that stands out in Freeway is not a mainstream English-language pop song: Belle, taken from the French musical Notre Dame de Paris. The boys recorded the song as a birthday present for Vladimir’s father, and it was their first hit. It has the boys alternating the parts of Frollo, Quasimodo, and Phoebus–in French, a language they admitted they don’t speak ("But I can say Bonjour! and Comment ça va?").

While more show tunes are not in the offing, Sergey says that he wants to go back to the theater. He recently finished drama school (Vladimir is taking Law), and he had been playing in major venues in Russia when Smash was conceived. One of his roles was, rightfully, Romeo, in a rather unique production about which he talks so animatedly. I ask Vladimir whether he is angry.

"No, no! He says that when people hear ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ they think of tragedy, death, tears, crying, and things like that. This was a very new, er . . ."

"Interpretation?"

"Interpretation. Yah, that’s right! A bit more modern because the director didn’t want to put it as a tragedy one more time. He tried to find much more life in it, much more funny moments . . . Sergey doesn’t like the balcony scene."

"Did you play Chekhov?"

"No, no Chekhov. Dostoevsky."

"He played Alyosha," says Vladimir.

The play was A Few Days of Alyosha Karamazov’s Life, adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, consisting of a series of dialogues between Alexi Karamazov and the other characters in the novel. "For two hours," recounts Vladimir, "he was on the stage. It’s his favorite role. He read the book a lot of times from beginning to end. He was preparing for this play for three years. After that, he changed a lot. He started thinking more like Alexi."

"More spiritual?"

"Sort of like that."

"We both love to read: Chekhov, Dostoevsky–"

"Tolstoy, Yevtushenko–"

"Solzhenitzyn–"

"Pushkin–"

"Sergey had Literature in college . . ."

"Can he recite Yevtushenko?" I ask.

"Ah, no," replies Vladimir. "Can you?"

"In English."

The boys chuckle, but then they have to go. A last question, then, something for a beauty pageant: what message do they, as musical ambassadors, want the rest of the world to know about their country in this post-Cold War period? They answer: "Because of recent history, no one gives Russia any respect. We want to show people that Russia has its own right to be. In the music business, why can we talk about English singers, American singers? Why doesn’t anyone talk about Russian music? We want to show that Russia has its own heroes, its own musicians, its own writers. We want to bring back that respect when Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky lived."

A "consummation devoutly to be wished" it is, but one unlikely for any pop duo, from any country, to accomplish in one lifetime. What is more likely, in the meantime, is that, should Vladimir and Sergey prove durable, Russia would soon be exporting not only athletes, cosmonauts, scientists, ballet dancers, philosophers, and poets, but also boy bands as smashing as Smash.