The strength of the Leningrad group is not so much in the social role as in how they work with the Russian language. They liberate it, again launching a mate at it, which is very indecent, but returns the language to its original freedom, simplicity and melody. There are many formalities and self-restraints in the language of culture, the elite and the mass are strongly divorced, especially in St. Petersburg. “Leningrad” reunites the high and the low. This revolution is already part of history.

The phenomenon of the popularity of the songs of the Leningrad group is not least due to the fact that every listener feels: “Oh, it’s only our man who could say that!” Everyone – that is, relatively speaking, both a professor-philologist and a gopnik from the gateway. “Tell me how to live not by lies” – in this line from Shnurov’s song, someone immediately considers a quote from Solzhenitsyn, and someone does not, but they will understand it on a different level, and it will not seem too highbrow to him. But “my man”, as Chernyshevsky noted, is the one who speaks “my language”. Sergei Shnurov just managed to find the language that most of our contemporaries who speak Russian recognize as their own. Moreover, he himself is a man of an unusually wide speech range. For example, singers have an average voice range of two octaves, a phenomenal one of five. I would rate Shnurov’s speech range at conditional four. It is enough to read a few of his interviews to see how organic expressions like “playing with contexts”, “narrative” and others are for him. And this completely bookish vocabulary is easily mixed with obscene and slang. I’m also interested in how Shnurov himself talks about language. He said more than once that the split in modern society is obvious and that the demarcation line runs exactly along the break of the language. There is a public language and a street language – and they tragically do not coincide. The leader of Leningrad caught this stylistic cacophony brilliantly.

I believe that “Leningrad” is a competent pop song made with a sense of smell. But if it was just pop, it wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is that Shnurov pretends that he is not who he is. He claims that he does not just tear his throat, but expresses time. And this, of course, is not so. I heard the opinion that “Leningrad” is similar to the protest rock of the 80s. But we don’t have social rock now, the protest has moved to rap, and there really are people who care. And Cord is not like that, he wanted to spit. He reports: “All bullshit, life is shit, elections, elections, deputies ******. There is nothing to take all this seriously, forget it and order yourself a whiskey. Better yet, two.” This is the carnivalization of serious things. Instead of thinking and being principled, he offers fun and rivers of alcohol. He replaces beautifully choreographed pop with a poignant statement. In fact, it’s just a tavern. Of course, he has artistry, roles, charisma and marketing talent. But he does not express time, but puts himself under it in the right position and profits from it.

Firstly, “Leningrad” gives us all a great mood. Secondly, Sergey Shnurov is an artist with a capital letter, a fantastically charismatic and excellently educated person who went through fire and water with rock and roll. The unique sincerity of judgments hits the heart not only, as is commonly believed, of the townsfolk, but of the entire Russian reality. I think the reason for the phenomenon of “Leningrad” is the incredible amount of work done by Shnurov and his group in all aspects of life – from drinking to studio nights during the 21 years of the team’s existence. If you see Shnurov on the street in St. Petersburg, be sure to come up and say “thank you”.

On the eve of the New Year holidays, the phone of the director of the Leningrad group is torn, despite the fact that the performance of the St. Petersburg group is not cheap – from 70 thousand euros, and closer to the New Year and all 150-200. But customers are ready to pay, because they understand that this group is able to create an atmosphere of wild, despairing intoxication, when a person releases all his demons out, guided by the principle – you need to walk in such a way that you are ashamed in the morning.

“I don’t know a period in this country when people liked what was happening. No one is happy on Rublyovka either, I answer you. And in the cellars of St. Petersburg, too, everyone is unhappy. This is a country of the disaffected by definition. People are born already with a sour mine on their faces. In summer, bitch, it’s hot, in winter, it’s cold, it’s always not the same ”- this is how Sergei Shnurov himself described the mood prevailing in Russian society. And as an experienced marketer, having calculated, he gave the dissatisfied audience a universal pill from melancholy-badness. About “crazy corporate parties with bears and prostitutes”, in which “Leningraders” had to participate, Shnurov willingly says: “At one corporate party in the hall there were about a hundred naked women and three drunken men.”

Sergey Shnurov: “We have a lot of emotional, but very little meaningful. It is difficult to surprise a Russian person during the whole life that he lives with something, neither with obscenity, nor with a naked look. Therefore, in order to reach the maximum number of listeners, musicians come up with more and more sophisticated ways to surprise. At the dawn of their career, the team members practiced completely forbidden techniques. For example, in 1998 they advertised in a magazine that in the St. Petersburg club “Griboyedov” “Leningrad” plays with Alla Pugacheva. A lot of people bought into this. The musician of the group, nicknamed Puzo, simply changed into Pugacheva, put on a dress and a red wig, walked around the stage with a bottle of vodka and yelled in a wild voice to the then Leningrad soloist Igor Vdovin: “I love only you and Pauls!”

In the late 90s, Zemfira and Mumiy Troll loudly declared themselves. They were good, but too refined. The place of a brawler, a person provocateur who would “troll” the whole society, remained vacant. It was taken by Sergey Shnurov. He could drink every day, and in the morning in a hotel room with a hangover famously answer the questions of provincial journalists. “Sergey, if you had a magic wand and you could make one wish, what would it be?” – “Don’t butt.”

It was a big impudence on his part, not being able to sing and really play the guitar, to become the main supplier of songs that are immediately sorted into quotes: “When there is no money, there is no love, such a bitch, this c’est la vie”, “Well, how , bitch, it’s not easy to fall out of love. ” In a paradoxical and even absurd way (“Do you like absurdity? I live in it”), intertwining and turning inside out meanings, emotional states in songs, turns tragedy into a farce. “Yesterday I had a wonderful dream – Moscow burned down entirely. A fire in the square on Krasnaya, and the former Electoral Committee is smoldering. No one survived – everyone burned down, all the Pussy, Putin and Sobchak, and the fir trees near the Kremlin wall burned … like that. At the same time, Cord himself publicly declares complete social indifference: “My political position is never to engage in politics.”

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