Thank you very much
katbeidar for translating this!
The author makes some great points and it's a very well written, interesting article. I agree that Ivan is a unique, excentric producer with crazy, brilliant ideas, but he's not an alchemist. As Ivan said himself a while ago on a Russian talkshow; he saw something in the girls he wanted to show to the world. Ivan said the same thing about Demyan, who has a very unique personality. Similarly with Tatu, the project is based on the girls' strong personalities, charisma etc - Ivan (&co) developed the shape and forms around the group. The author seems to miss that one of the key aspects to Tatu's success is precisely due to these two girls carrying the project. I also think the girls' voices are underestimated. They don't have the most technically great voices and Yulia has problems with her vocal chords etc, but they certainly have very distinguished timbres and that accounts for very much.
I'll continue to be sceptical about this whole conflict, but if it turns out to have been true all along, I think that the first rumour about Sergej Pimenov being asked to become Tatu's new producer sounded like a pretty interesting idea.