Russia’s music sales fell 21 percent in the first half of last year, so you can hardly blame the crisis for their continual slump. It may be a quality issue. But there’s also the little matter of piracy: most CDs sold in Russia are unauthorized copies. And Russians paying for downloading an MP3? Ha! So the country's artists rely on live performances to make bank. As they say, though, mo’ rubles, mo’ problems. Now more than ever, Russia’s artists are trying to break into Western music scenes. Perhaps no one more fervently than Valeriya, the 40-year-old Forbes-honored Russian singer whose PR people insist — just insist — on calling her “the Russian Madonna.”

If she is, she has a funny way of showing it. Would a Madonna act squeamish about being a gay icon? And, hey, did the real Madonna spend the height of her career innovating or ripping off other people's ideas, like, say A-ha’s rotoscope video for “Take On Me”? This clip of Valeriya's 1996 hit "Airplane" (Самолёт) just makes us want to see the real thing, be that Madonna or A-ha.

Fast forward to Valeriya’s much blonder career at present. Here she is doing a duet called “Taking Leave” (Расставание) with Stas Pieha, another Russian superstar we’re sure to see chiseling his way Westward. Teaming up with a younger male pop star is exactly what Madonna did last year with Justin Timberlake, but the comparison just highlights the shabbiness of this effort. The ballad's "hook" is this half-assed chipmunk sound Valeriya makes with her mouth, and the video seems to be about generalized anxiety disorder. VH1 here we come!

Indeed, as we write, Valeriya and her crew are busy tailoring her image for the West. She’s got an English-language website up and running, English lyrics to her songs (not that the Russian songs are that hard to understand, otherwise), a blog, a Facebook account and a single, “Wild,” that her manager/husband is sending to 300 clubs and DJs in the United States. You know, just to test the waters. The plan is to bombard Americans with a Valeriya publicity blitz, even though a similar stunt in Britain failed to land the singer a distributor there.

As The New York Times confirms, Western music companies still have a bad feeling about doing business in Russia. And Russia’s record companies aren’t really helping their own. Instead, they’re cozying up to their Western partners in an intensified effort to sell Western music in Russia.

To sum up, we have to borrow Russian music critic and producer Artyom Troitsky’s quote from the Times article: “It would be funny if the country that was famous for Tchaikovsky would become known only for producing third-rate Madonnas or second-rate Robbie Williamses.”

Yeah. Funny’s one way to put it.

Russian Musicians Yearn for Fans Abroad[NYT]

Photo courtesy of Valeriya.co.uk's photostream