“So fake.” Sergey Zhadan about Ukrainian war songs

The musician and writer criticized the songs about Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian writer, frontman of the band Zhadan and Dogs Sergey Zhadan shared his impression of Ukrainian songs on the topic of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“We are currently experiencing some kind of strange period in terms of music, show business, when the music sounds better on the radio stations during advertising than when the music itself is playing there,” Zhadan said in Pryam Chervona’s YouTube channel.

The writer remembers watching the New Year’s show on TV.

“This is the cream of the year, and it’s not even about what kind of music it is, it’s about the stylistic inconsistency, it seems. It somehow darkened me too much. There is a stage and all these songs about the dead Russians were performed, and there were extras in the hall at that time, girls of student age danced happily and carelessly. And the musicians happily served the all this on stage. It may seem like some kind of celebration of life, and then you die meat, charred bones too,” said Zhadan.

According to him, he sees the ideological component of such songs and, of course, does not deny it.

“But how it all seems aesthetically, intonationally, it’s all very false … Such dances in the ashes,” said the leader of the group Zhadan and the dogs.

At the same time, the writer noted that he did not want to slide exclusively into criticism and admitted that since February 24, 2022, a lot of different interesting music appeared in Ukraine.

Among the compositions he liked, Zhadan named the song Misto Mary Okean Elzy.

“Honest, very well done, the words are interesting, the presentation is interesting. Vakarchuk is like Vakarchuk,” said Zhadan.

Recall that Zhadan and the leader of the Boombox group Andrey Khlivnyuk released a common track called Pravda.

Earlier it was reported that Sergei Zhadan shared his impressions in a conversation with Valery Zaluzhny.