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Sign upDeep dives into single hits - sound anatomy, chart history, legacy.
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23 June 2022. Yura Shatunov dies. Over 30 years of solo career - eight albums, a rights trial and "Song of the Year". We break down the solo repertoire: "Detstvo" with three versions of authorship, "Klyanus", "A leto tsveta".
1996. Yura Shatunov, four years after the breakup of Laskovyy Mai, releases the album "Iskusstvennoe dykhanie" (Artificial Respiration) - ten hits in rave remixes. Release date: 1 January 1996, according to iTunes. The remixes were done by E. Rodionov at solaris station and V. Afanasyev at C&M Records.
1986, Orenburg. Sergei Kuznetsov returns home from the first performance of the group Laskovyy Mai - a New Year's concert at Boarding School No. 2. The next morning he picks up a red pen and writes the song "Belye rozy" (White Roses) in 15 minutes. Yura Shatunov, who will sing it, is 13 years old.
1989. The music video for "Belye rozy" (White Roses) airs on the TV programme Utrennyaya pochta (Morning Post) on Central Television - and within months Laskovyy Mai becomes a national sensation. Twenty years later, in 2009, a biographical film "Laskovyy Mai" will reignite interest in the songs.
1988, Orenburg. Sergei Kuznetsov, the music circle leader at Boarding School No. 2, brings several cassettes to the railway station kiosk - recordings of his pupil, 14-year-old Yura Shatunov. Among six songs on the tape is "Sedaya noch" (Grey Night), the sixth track of the album "Belye rozy" (White Roses), 6 minutes 14 seconds long.
You know the song but need one particular version: that remix from a video or a mix. Which features to write down, where to look up the remixer and why catalogues sometimes disagree. Five worked cases: Blue Monday, Tom's Diner, Missing and two songs from our catalogue.
In 1983 the group Big Ben Tribe releases a cover of David Bowie's “Heroes” (1977) on Zanza Records. The same year Hipnosis covers Vangelis's “Pulstar” (1976) on Memory Records, and Cockroach covers The Beatles' “Get Back” (1969) on the Out label. Three covers in one year - all on Italian labels.
28 August 1978: the German group Boney M releases the single “Rasputin” - from the album “Nightflight to Venus”. Written by Frank Farian, George Reyam and Fred Jay. The song about Grigori Rasputin rises to №1 in Germany, Austria and Australia, №2 in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The melody sparked a debate: critics pointed to its similarity with the Turkish song “Kâtibim”, but the band denied borrowing.
1983, Italy. On the Crash label - a sub-label of Il Discotto Productions - a 12-inch single appears: China Town “Bette Davis Eyes”, catalogue number DS 005. It is a cover of Jackie DeShannon's song, which Kim Carnes turned into a number-one hit in 1981. The vocalist is Dora Carofiglio, uncredited on the sleeve. The single does not chart, gets no rotation, and twenty years later exists only in collectors' hands.
29 October 2019: the streaming service Deezer releases Spleeter into open source - a TensorFlow library that splits a finished recording into vocals, drums, bass and “other”. In its first week the GitHub repository collects over 5,000 stars.
October 1983: the Italian project China Town releases a cover of Kim Carnes's “Bette Davis Eyes” - on the Crash label, catalogue number DS 005. Forty years later, that same track ends up in a playlist next to a cover recorded in 2024 on a home studio running Logic Pro 11. The loudness gap between them can reach 8 decibels.
14 February 1967. Aretha Franklin records “Respect” in a New York session that continued work begun at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Two years earlier the same song had been released by Otis Redding - a man's plea for “respect” when he comes home from work. Franklin's version became her breakout hit and signature song, and Redding himself later folded her ideas into his own performances with the Bar-Kays.
November 1987. Mikhail Boyarsky records “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” for a Melodiya long-play. The song was written by composer Oleg Kvasha to lyrics by Valery Panfilov and originally performed by Kvasha himself - but in mass memory it attached itself to Boyarsky. This is a case where a cover outgrew the original: the performer's version became the face of the song, while the author's version stayed with a narrow circle.
12 December 2007. Alexander Pushny posts a cover of “Zelenoglazoe Taxi” - in the style of Rammstein, with a German lyric “Du Taxi mit den Augen grün”. The song he is covering was written by composer Oleg Kvasha to lyrics by Valery Panfilov in 1987 and originally performed by Kvasha himself. In twenty years one Soviet эстрада piece gathered at least nine documented versions, from a disco remix to an English-language pop cover.
November 3, 1992. Whitney Houston releases “I Will Always Love You”, a pop ballad for the film The Bodyguard; the soundtrack and the single ship on the same day. The song will sit at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for fourteen weeks, earn a diamond RIAA certification, top the charts of 34 countries and sell more than 25 million copies - the year's best-seller and the biggest-selling single by a female solo artist in history.
Soviet songs dressed in Italo Disco introduce familiar melodies to a new generation. We explain what makes a cover work, the arrangement technique, and the best makeovers from the Disco Magic catalogue.
"Don't Wake Me Up" by J.D. Jaber is a prime example of melodic yet overlooked Italo Disco. We break down the credits, label, vocals, versions and why the song keeps coming back.
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