“Every song has a zest”: Garik Martirosyan about the new music show “Sweetie”

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TNT is launching a new music show with you and Marina Kravets. What is this show and what is the point?

Our show is called “Candy”, and despite the competitive element, this is a very kind project. The essence of the show is that we give a real chance to creative people who wrote songs and posted their videos on the Internet for many years, finally declare themselves widely on the air of the federal channel TNT, open up before the eyes of the whole country. The mechanics of the show are as follows: TNT finds music videos on the Internet that the channel’s editors found funny or promising. Someone has interesting lyrics, somewhere the authors themselves seem to be bright characters. The main thing: everyone has a zest that you can cling to to turn a song that still doesn’t sound so cool or very modern, and sometimes even a little ridiculous, into a real pop hit. The songs and clips that we selected for the show are added to one database, which is then shown to the stars, and they cover it.

And how is the process of turning a song into a “candy”? Who is working on this?

Well, for example, Nikolai Baskov or Alexei Chumakov watched all 20 videos and realized what kind of song he could perform, come up with a cool arrangement for it. Then Alexey Chumakov goes to the studio, works there for two weeks on arrangement, vocals, all this is reduced and mixed. And then the artist comes to TNT, where he is given a number with dancers, musicians, scenery. All this, of course, is also rehearsed and prepared. As a result, we watch the original clip, a remake from the star, and ask: did you manage to make “candy” out of the song or not? In each issue – five clips and the same number of rehashings. Among them, we will choose the winner, who will receive a prize of 300 thousand rubles.

This is a nice bonus!

Yes, we came to the conclusion that a cash prize is needed, since most of the participants are non-professional musicians. This money is very important to them. They will be able to sign up for them in the studio or buy the necessary equipment, pay for some necessary classes. As far as I know, most of the winners have decided to invest in the further development of their work.

And who exactly is responsible for the musical part? Who works with the stars, helps them remake the songs?

“Comedy’club members” Zurab Matua, Andrey Averin and Pasha Gavrilenkov work with the stars. As well as wonderful musicians Yuri Ignatov and Anatoly Machulenko. These are the most important people on this show, so I think it’s important to talk about them. In each release, we take five clips and performances, in total – this is 40 (!) New songs. They have to work very hard! “Candy” could also exist in a more serious field, as an ordinary music show where unknown people come, present their clips, and the stars remake their songs into real hits. I’m sure it will surprise everyone how stars can open up with brand new musical material and the drive to do something cool and hit on our show. What did Sergey Lazarev do on the “Konfetka”? And what did Alexey Vorobyov do? Nikolai Baskov, Philip Kirkorov! Karina Koks from the group “Cream” struck. And Soso Pavliashvili? It turns out that he is very organic in rock! As part of our show, Soso also sings in this genre … This is not even a rock, and not a Caucasian song, but something completely different! My jaw just dropped when I saw this.

Who ultimately determines the winner of the project?

The winner is determined by the audience in the hall, as well as our star jury: the last word is just for our experts. The composition of the jury will change. For example, what is a humorous show on TNT without Olga Buzova?! She will appear in several programs. There will be Klava Coca. I don’t want to offend anyone, but Klava is one of the best, a real gem of our jury. I don’t even know what epithets to choose to describe how much we love and appreciate her. The guys will be Timur Rodriguez. I will not describe his data and competence, everyone understands that Timur is simply the highest class. Azamat Musagaliev will also appear. It was hard for him, because we do not give the jury the opportunity to joke a lot, but still we focus on songs and music. But Azamat found an opportunity to show his sharp mind and sense of humor. The jury will also include Khabib, Anatoly Tsoi.

That is, this show can be safely called a springboard for unknown musicians?

Perhaps. We spent a lot of effort and energy so that the simplest people could become famous throughout the country thanks to their creativity. For many, I will not be responsible for all, but for many there was practically no such chance. Therefore, I believe that this is a very fair and kind show. Of course, I will not say that if it were not for us, the participants, in principle, would not have had a chance in life. But for me, the fact that television is still a social elevator that can help you become a big star is obvious. And I hope that this will be the case in the “Konfetka” show, and people from the Internet will gain great popularity thanks to our project. You will see that some stars offer them to sing a duet, shoot a new video or sell a song. You have no idea what will happen on our show!

You are running the show in tandem with Marina Kravets. What is your role as leaders?

Marina Kravets and I ended up in the frame precisely because we decided to add an element of humor to this musical show. Theoretically, “Konfetka” could be hosted by completely different people, but the TNT channel invited us to dilute with jokes all the moments of communication between the jury, viewers and stars with people from the Internet. Marina gushes with humor, I do not stop, the jury members also do not stand aside and joke, everyone is having fun.

Are the writers having fun? How do they react to an invitation to such a project? After all, many laid out their songs many years ago.

Some of them, by the way, refuse. Someone simply does not want their song to be remade, someone is shy. We had a funny case with two men who did come to the show. By the way, great guys, very interesting. So, they refused, because they did not believe that they were really being written to from TNT. We thought that these were scammers from some left account. They answered: “Let Martirosyan and Kravets prove that such a show exists at all.” Marina and I recorded a video where we said that we are real and are not going to deceive anyone. It will be shown later on the air. And the guys themselves came and performed great.

Who came up with the idea for a show like Candy? Are you a producer?

Here I’m going to talk about three guys who are working on “Sweetie” and who worked on “Self-Irony of Fate”. This is all the work of Maxim Tkachenko, Artem Sizykh and Andrey Shelkov, whom everyone knows from the Comedy Club and the USB group as Stas, and he was also a member of the legendary KVN team “Maximum”. Andrey is from the Krasnoyarsk Territory, like Artem and Maxim, all these years they have been working on the TV series “Bearded Man” and other projects, not only on the TNT channel.

By the way, about “Self-Irony”. Perhaps no other project has caused such a resonance among the audience. They began to discuss it (and for some reason criticize it) even before TNT showed it on the air. How did you react to this?

Yes, this project was mistakenly called a remake, and therefore a field for criticism opened up. Remakes have already been made by other directors at other times, and ours is not a remake at all, but a partial parody. The fact is that in our name the main word is “self-irony”, which exists separately in the Russian language. This is exactly what we wanted to emphasize our attitude: we laugh at ourselves, parody the stars of TNT, their relationship – for example, the excellent relationship between Pavel Volya and Laysan Utyasheva – and much more. Self-irony concerns not Eldar Ryazanov’s film, but ourselves.

Now on TV there is a very large number of formats – musical, humorous. Many formats of humor itself. What is close to you personally? Roasted, stand-up, miniatures?

I will be banal, but I will say that I like it when everything is done with taste. I like, for example, the way Studio Soyuz does it: it remakes modern hits in the style of the 60s and 70s, or even disco. They are very skillful in this, and all this is done by them with great musical taste. In general, I like musical humor, the synthesis of jokes and songs, it is very close to me and excites me very much.