1993. Lada Dance releases her debut disc "Nochnoy Album" ("Night Album"), which will sell a million copies. The producer of the song "Ya Poidu s Toboi" ("I'll Go With You") is Leonid Velichkovsky, the keyboardist and composer of the group "Tekhnologiya". According to iTunes, the album "Nochnoy Album" is dated January 1, 1993; the genre is pop. The single "Ya Poidu s Toboi" came out a year earlier, in 1992, and it was this song that launched the singer's solo career - before "Devochka-Noch" ("Girl-Night") and "Zhit Nuzhno v Kayf" ("Life Should Be in High Style"). The sound of 1993 is the sound of a producer who came from synth-pop into pop estrada.
Lada Dance before "Ya Poidu s Toboi"
Lada Evgenyevna Volkova, better known as Lada Dance, was born on September 11, 1966 in Kaliningrad (according to the official website - 1969, although 1966 was listed there earlier). She attended Kaliningrad school No. 44. She finished music school and then music college: she entered the academic vocal department and later switched to jazz-variety. Her musical career began with performances in a school group, where Lada sang and played keyboards. While at music college she sang at dance floors and in a restaurant.
In 1988, at the final concert of the estrada song festival "Yurmala-88," Lada met Alina Vitebskaya and Svetlana Lazareva. The girls soon formed the trio "Zhensovet" ("Women's Council"), whose producer became Alina's husband, Khariton Vitebsky. The trio performed songs about social problems of the time - the same approach that "Kombinaciya" would later take, but with a different texture: "Zhensovet" was a vocal trio, not a dance group. But that song subject matter soon went out of fashion, and the group broke up. During the shooting of a "Zhensovet" clip in Odessa, Lada met Philipp Kirkorov, for whom she later worked for several years as a backing vocalist.
Detail: on the album tracklist the song is titled "Poydu s toboy" - the longer "Ya poydu s toboy" took hold later, in reissues and search queries.
Leonid Velichkovsky: a producer from "Tekhnologiya"
After the breakup of "Zhensovet," the singer stayed in Moscow without work or support, but had no intention of returning to her hometown. For a year and a half she scraped by on casual work - backing vocals, restaurant gigs, dance-floor performances. After a year and a half, she turned to the keyboardist and composer of the group "Tekhnologiya," Leonid Velichkovsky, who agreed to become her producer.
Leonid Borisovich Velichkovsky was born on November 29, 1965 in Moscow. He graduated from MIREA. In 1987 he joined the synth-pop group "Bioconstructor" as a keyboardist. In 1990, after the departure of Alexander Yakovlev from "Bioconstructor," the remaining members formed the group "Tekhnologiya," where Velichkovsky served as keyboardist and composer. In 1992 Velichkovsky took second place in the "Moskovsky Komsomolets" newspaper's poll for "Composer of the Year." In 1991 he collaborated with the group "Komissar," writing the music for six songs from their first album, "Nashe Vremya Prishlo" ("Our Time Has Come").
By the end of the 20th century, Velichkovsky had about a hundred musical works officially registered with the Russian Authors' Society. In 1997, together with Igor Siliverstov, he selected seven girls from four thousand candidates for the new project "Strelki" ("Arrows") - a group divided into several pairs and a lead singer with a ballet, performing simultaneously in several venues. In parallel, Velichkovsky and Seliverstov produced the group "Virus." He ended his career as a producer and musician in 2004 and went into business, but in 2014 he returned to show business as the producer of Olga Buzova.
1992: the meeting and the first hit
In 1992, Velichkovsky took on producing the singer Lada Volkova - and it was for her that he wrote the reggae "Zhit Nuzhno v Kayf." But the first hit was "Ya Poidu s Toboi" - a 1992 single that was included in the debut album "Nochnoy Album" of 1993. According to iTunes, on the "Nochnoy Album" the track is listed as "Poidu s Toboi" (without "Ya") and is dated January 1, 1993.
- Producer: Leonid Velichkovsky
- Performer: Lada Dance (Lada Volkova)
- Single: "Ya Poidu s Toboi" (1992)
- Album: "Nochnoy Album" (1993)
- Genre (iTunes): pop
- Album sales: one million copies
Detail: the stage name "Lada Dance" was born not in the studio but on tour - when the singer was offered to open for the group "Kar-Men," and she had to assemble her own thirty-minute programme. The name Lada Volkova did not sound like a stage name, and "Dance" added the dance context that the opening programme demanded.
"Nochnoy Album" 1993: a million copies
In 1993 the debut disc "Nochnoy Album" was released, selling a million copies. The album included three hits: "Ya Poidu s Toboi" (1992 single), "Devochka-Noch" ("Girl-Night," 1993 single, also known in an English-language version as "Baby Tonight"), and "Zhit Nuzhno v Kayf" (1993 single, a reggae composition written by Velichkovsky specifically for Lada). Velichkovsky wrote the music for "Zhit Nuzhno v Kayf" and produced the entire album; several of Lada Dance's albums in the mid-90s were produced by Velichkovsky, who even paused his work with "Tekhnologiya" for the new project.
The sound of "Nochnoy Album" is the sound of a producer who came from synth-pop. By 1993 Velichkovsky already had "Bioconstructor" and "Tekhnologiya" behind him - two synth-pop groups with electronic production. From there come the keyboard pads, the programmed drums, the melodic bass. But "Ya Poidu s Toboi" is not synth-pop - it is pop estrada with a dance rhythm section: Velichkovsky brought the electronic texture but did not experiment with form. That was the calculation - to give estrada a sound that was both fashionable and accessible.
The name "Lada Dance" and tours with "Kar-Men"
After a falling-out with Leonid Velichkovsky, the singer was offered to open for the group "Kar-Men," but on one condition - she had to have her own thirty-minute programme. Lada did not have enough songs, and at the studio she stole the phonograms of Lika Star. It was on those tours that the stage name "Lada Dance" was born.
Lada lived with Velichkovsky from 1992 to 1994. With the emergence of new interests in the autumn of 1996, Lada Dance and Velichkovsky separated. In a 2008 interview with the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets," the singer emphasised that she and Velichkovsky, although they lived together, were never officially married.
1996: German composers and Playboy
In 1994 Lada Dance recorded a duet with Lev Leshchenko, "Ni k Chemu, Ni k Chemu" ("For Nothing, For Nothing"). Soon, with the help of the journalist Mikhail Sigalov, who had contacts with show-business representatives in Germany, several German disco composers offered Lada their melodies: Megan Voss, Ralf Siegel, Alfons Weindorf. Ralf Siegel is a German composer and producer who wrote songs for dozens of Eurovision contestants, including the 1982 winner Nicole ("Ein bisschen Frieden"). In Russia, Russian lyrics were written for their melodies, and the result was the album "Vkus Lyubvi" ("The Taste of Love," 1996). In Velichkovsky's own words, the album was an attempt to break into the European show business. The new album was aimed at European music lovers, which earned her an invitation to the international music festival Popkomm-95 in Germany. At the same time, Lada Dance began appearing in magazines as an erotic model - her appearance on the cover of Playboy in December 1996 was particularly notable.
The sound of 1993: what you hear in "Ya Poidu s Toboi"
"Ya Poidu s Toboi" is pop estrada of 1993, recorded by a producer from synth-pop. The tempo is moderate, around 100-110 BPM, the harmony is simple, the vocal is up front, keyboard pads in the background. The structure is standard for an estrada single: verse - chorus - verse - chorus - break - chorus. Nothing experimental - and that is exactly why the song works: it can be put on a dance floor, on the radio, and in karaoke without reworking. The narrow vocal range and the repeating chorus make it convenient to cover - which is why in search it is looked up not only by title but also with the word "remix."
The Disco Magic catalogue includes a version of "Ya Poidu s Toboi", and it stands alongside our other treatments: a new rhythm section, the original vocal preserved. This works because the song's harmony is stable - as with other tracks of Russian synth-pop of the same generation. The song closes the live search query "lada dance ya poidu s toboi remix" - and this is not accidental: the 1993 original was written so that its arrangement can be updated without breaking the melody. A similar path was taken by eurodance with female vocals, where producers from the electronic scene made pop hits: the same logic, only in a different genre. And against the backdrop of the eurodance of 1992, "Ya Poidu s Toboi" looks like a Russian version of the same producer's technique - electronic production under an estrada vocal.
Lada Dance today
In 1997 the singer released the album "Fantazii" ("Fantasies"), on which she recorded both her best songs and classic foreign jazz and estrada standards with the Oleg Lundstrem Orchestra - including her own versions of Marilyn Monroe's "I Wanna Be Loved by You" and Barbra Streisand's "Woman in Love." The same year saw another album, "Na Ostrovakh Lyubvi" ("On the Islands of Love"). From the early 2000s Lada Dance temporarily stepped back from touring. In 2002 the director Dmitry Fiks invited the singer to one of the lead roles in the TV series "Balzakovsky Vozrast, ili Vse Muzhiki Svo..." ("Babette's Age, or All Men Are Bastards..."). She took part in the third and fourth seasons of the transformation show "Toch-v-Toch" ("Spot On"), where she portrayed Sofia Rotaru, Laima Vaikule, CC Catch, and others. In 2023 Lada Dance participated in the fourth season of the show "Maska" ("The Mask") in the image of a Poodle, taking 3rd place in the final. On August 5, 2023, at the 52nd kilometre of the M2 "Krym" highway, she was in a serious car accident, sustaining a traumatic brain injury and a bruised spine. "Ya Poidu s Toboi" remains in her repertoire - and in rotation, and in search, where it is looked up by title, by lyric line, and with the word "remix."
