Is tATu returning to Argentina? The story behind the Russian duo who fooled the world with their fake lesbian romance

An X account in the name of the duo t.A.T.u. announced on their networks that the Russian singers will perform again in Argentina in 2026. Different Instagram accounts of their fans had recently asked for support for them to do so.

Although there is no official confirmation, everything seems to indicate that, if it gets enough public, Lena Katina and Julia Volkova -today at 41 and 40 years old, respectively- will return next year to the stages of South America after their shows in Mexico.

In 2003, at the height of the music video boom, the Russians exploded on the international pop scene with the hit “All the Things She Said”the first of his people to cross borders.

On MTV, Lena and Julia were shown kissing, they pretended to be a couple, and in this way, with this apparent manifestation of sexual freedom, they branded a generation of young people who saw that homosexuality on TV was still a taboo subject.

The acting (because everything was a perverse staging) was not without controversy: the duo began to be a hypersexualized product when the girls were still minors.

For years it was thought that they were girlfriends, but this was nothing more than a plan by one of their representatives, Ivan Shapovalov (the other, Alexander Voitinskiy, is not mentioned in most media as one of the minds behind the duo’s marketing) to launch their talents into the spotlight.

The announcement of the supposed official X of tATu Photo: capture

Because the concept of the tATu duo arose with that idea: a couple of singing girls, schoolgirls, who pretend to be lesbians.

In fact, the band’s name is an abbreviation of the Russian phrase “This girl loves that girl,” and the idea of ​​bringing them together came from Shapovalov based on the Swedish film Show Me Lovewhich is about two teenagers who realize they like each other.

tATu took the concept to an extreme in the MTV Movie Awards 2003where they kissed before tens of thousands of spectators. Those were times when the sexuality of artists captured the attention of the press and fans much more than now.

Years after their separation in 2011, Katina and Volkova confirmed that their relationship was fake. In conversation with The Daily BeastLena said she always “played a role.” «I was never a lesbian. I never felt attracted to a girl. I never felt that,» she said.

Julia, although she acknowledged having been attracted to girls in the past, also made it clear that nothing ever happened between her and Lena.

Post separation, it is believed that the duo spent many years without speaking to each other. Beyond some sporadic reunion in the past decade, they never functioned as tATu again on a regular and persistent basis over time.

Today, together again and with a better relationship, they would have promoted on their networks a tour of Brazil, Colombia and Argentina in 2026, a country to which they would return after 20 years.

The tATu duo shined in the late nineties and early two thousand. Photo: AP

Clarín contacted the promoter of his shows in Mexico but did not receive answers.