Welcome to Remember When, a series in which we want to make sure you remembered a thing that happened pretty recently, in the grand scheme of things.

A couple months ago, I was working on one of my many Spotify playlists, going through songs from the early aughts, when “All the Things She Said” by Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. came up as a suggested track. I immediately hit “add to playlist.” 21 years after the song’s initial release, it’s still a bop. (Let’s not talk about the 21 years ago part, I am simply not in the mood to hurt my own feelings right now.)

Lena Katina and Julia Volkova, otherwise known as t.A.T.u, were packaged as a pair of pixie-like schoolgirl lesbians — what every man imagines lesbians look like — by managers Ivan Shapovalov and Alexander Voitinskiy. The name t.A.T.u. is a shortened version of the Russian phrase “Та любит ту,” which means “This [girl] loves that [girl].” The two men were inspired by the Swedish teen film Show Me Love, which is about two girls in a small town who realize they like each other.

“All the Things She Said” came out my junior year of high school, the same year I began my very own sapphic journey, and Show Me Love was the first sapphic film I’d ever seen, shown to me by the first girl I’d ever kissed. t.A.T.u. also has a song called “Show Me Love” on their debut album, and I remember illegally downloading it and burning it onto a mix CD. I listened to it so much it made up for the possible viruses I put onto our family computer.

“All the Things She Said” really made its impact in 2003. You couldn’t escape it — my local radio station played it all the time and I recorded it every single time. It was the first song I’d ever heard on the radio that was explicitly a girl singing a song about another girl. Listening to it in the privacy of my room felt like an open secret — I couldn’t believe that it was allowed on the radio! Even at 17, I understood a lot of their branding and imagery was created for the male gaze, and it didn’t matter much to me. Music was such an important part of my life at that age; just being able to sing along with a song on the radio that used female pronouns was life changing.

t.A.T.u wasn’t just known for their music, though — they also stirred up a lot of controversy.

From the minute “All the Things She Said” hit the airwaves, there had been rumblings that the girls in t.A.T.u. weren’t actually lesbians. I mean, it makes sense; they were too stereotypical. The schoolgirl outfits, Julia’s spiky short hair, Lena’s long curls. It just feels like what two older straight men think lesbians look like. They certainly didn’t look like any of the lesbians I knew at the time. They didn’t even look like teenage girls, even though they were.

Julia Volkova and Lena Katina of t.A.T.u. during 2003 MTV Movie Awards – Arrivals at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, United States. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

In early 2003, prior to an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the network told management that they didn’t want the girls to kiss or wear their shirts that said “Khuy Voyne!” (Fuck the war!). There’s no footage of the appearance on YouTube, but a clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live! the night after shows that the network cut away from the kiss to show their guitar player shredding the instrumental break. At the kiss point in the performance, Julia puts her hand in front of their faces, and it looks like she’s just whispering in Lena’s ear based on the faces they’re making when they pull away. Instead of the shirts with the Russian phrase, they’re wearing shirts that say “Censored.” The Kimmel interview is expectedly awkward, due to only Lena really being able to speak English and Jimmy Kimmel being a total creep.

But the t.A.Tu moment that is imprinted most dramatically on the millennial mind is their performance of “Not Gonna Get Us” at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards.

The performance begins with an introduction by Hilary Duff and Amanda Bynes, who do their best teenage starlet impressions as they list a bunch of 2003’s hottest men like Ashton Kutcher and Hugh Jackman before Bynes chirps, “These next two performers want nothing to do with any of them!” She’s saying the thing without saying the thing.

Julia and Lena appear in the audience in white tank tops and patterned handkerchief skirts, where they sing the opening chorus of “All the Things She Said.” They’re then joined by a literal horde of young women in the schoolgirl uniforms — complete with ties (very 2003) — who begin storming down the aisles towards the stage singing “Not Gonna Get Us.”

Lena and Julia walk back and forth across the stage singing while the “dancers” bop around chanting “not gonna get us!” — the choreography for these dancers is mostly just “shaking their butts in the audience’s faces.” As the song crescendos, the dancers begin ripping off their button-down shirts and skirts, leaving them in only tank tops and white briefs as statements like “Hide Your Daughters” flash on the screens behind them. The performance ends with everyone on stage except the alleged lesbian duo of t.A.T.u kissing.

(I feel like it’s also important to mention that throughout the performance, alleged rapist Diddy, convicted rapist Danny Masterson, and rape apologist Kutcher can be seen whooping and hollering in excitement. At the end of the performance, the three can be seen holding the discarded clothes of the dancers. 2003, everybody!)

If there was ever any doubt about them actually being lesbians in my mind, and there certainly were, that performance confirmed that maybe this was all an act. While U.S. late night might have been against them kissing on-screen, MTV would definitely be the place to do it. When it comes to MTV award shows, all bets were always off. I’d been watching MTV award shows for years; I saw Diana Ross jiggling Lil’ Kim’s right breast ON LIVE TELEVISION. Two women kissing wouldn’t have been a big deal. (And it wasn’t — two months after t..A.T.u. didn’t kiss, Britney Spears and Madonna did at the MTV VMAs.) The whole thing seemed in service of creating controversy, but all it did was titillate the male audience.

The MTV Movie Awards performance was the final live performance by the duo in the United States. It seems that their novelty had worn off already. Watching the videos back now, it looks clear to me that Lena would rather be anywhere but on stage pretending to be romantically interested in Julia. To her credit, Julia plays into the bit, caressing Lena’s face, and reaching for her hand as they sing. But Lena just never fully commits.

“I looked at it as my role … like a movie. We play in a role in a movie. That was my role. I never was a lesbian. I never was attracted to a girl. I never had that,” Lena told The Daily Beast in 2013. “I had some thoughts, because I was pretending to be who I wasn’t. And then, I was thinking about it a lot, ‘Why am I concerned?’ There are so many actors playing different roles in movies. I will just look at it as a movie. If I am helping people with this role, then why not.”

And they did help people. Even though I knew that the girls weren’t lesbians, the group had a profound impact on a lot of us. Seeing Julia and Lena kissing made a whole generation of girls realize that it’s okay to kiss girls. Of course it was too good to be true.

But the revelation that they weren’t lesbians did damage too. Julia and Lena were only accepted because they were white, thin and conventionally pretty. Queer women were able to accept them so easily because we were desperate for lesbian representation. All we had was Ellen, whose daytime talk show would premiere that fall, and Melissa Etheridge. It would be a year before The L Word would premiere on Showtime. In the spring of 2003, there were no lesbian pop stars. Real lesbians were still being ostracized, which made it easy for the fake ones to slip in.

Things got weird with t.A.T.u. when Julia got pregnant in 2004 by her boyfriend, fully shattering any pretense that the members were lesbians. She had her second child in 2007, and in a 2012 interview, she confirmed that she was still bisexual. “I still like boys and girls. Even my current husband, Volodya, sitting in front of me, would confirm that he knows about my stories with girls. For me, this is a current issue. Quite recently, I had a girlfriend that I liked … This is not even the echoes of the past, this is what I now live in,” she said.

Later, the duo were featured in a movie called You and I, adapted from a book called t.A.T.u. Come Back. Starring Mischa Barton doing a truly laughable Russian accent, it’s about two girls who meet on a t.A.T.u. fansite and fall for each other, which causes a string of adventures around Moscow. You can buy or rent it on YouTube. I found the trailer, and holy wow.

t.A.T.u. officially broke up in 2011, and Lena and Julia spent many years not speaking and taking swipes at each other. They have reunited for one-off performances over the last ten years or so, including a performance of “Not Gonna Get Us” that features the same chaotic dancer energy, but no lesbian kissing. Look, t.A.T.u. may not have been lesbians, but they still gave us a certified bop that hits just as hard today as it did 20 years ago. And isn’t that the most important thing?

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