More on a pop icon

I'll leave the serious stuff to Andy over at SiberianLight for the time being. Preparing exams has left me unable to concentrate (or at least to write about) any serious issues. I thus feel the need to add a bit more to my earlier comment about the fluffy topic of Russia's recent celebrity divorce scandal. I located an article on Pravda.ru written in happier times - on the tenth anniversary of the Kirkorov-Pugachova wedding. It talks about how the mayor of St. Petersburg at the time of their wedding, the late Anatoly Sobchak (or "Sabchak," as his name appears in the article), encouraged the pair to tie the knot in the northern capital. Note that this was in 1994, (I think) before the addition of young Volodya Putin to Sobchak's team. If VVP had been around, maybe this farce could have been avoided, but then what would the Russian tabloids have written about all these years?

And another random article has a very good explanation, for foreigners, of "Alla Pugacheva's Everlastimg [sic] Magic." The best comparison I can think of to someone in the US context would be Elvis Presley, who was, like Pugachova, once young and attractive and then grew bloated and overblown, with crazy on-stage outfits, etc. I've heard people say about both Elvis and Alla Borisovna that they both had tremendous stage presence in live shows at all stages of their careers, so maybe the comparison is a good one. I guess we can wish Pugachova better luck in dealing with the twilight of her stardom than Elvis had.