Smash!!

SMASH!!, Russia`s most successful pop group, has conquered the music scene with their debut album "FREEWAY" featuring the singles "Talk To Me", "Belle", "Freeway", "Obsession" (recorded with famous Italian band EARPHONES), and a cover for George Michael's "Faith". The group has already created a big name for themselves in their own native country of Russia, as well as in Ukraine, Belarus and parts of the Eastern European countries. They also where honored the "Best New Artist of the Year" award at the annual National Music Awards organized by Russian Music channel MuzTV. In addition, Smash!! has gathered all the national awards in 2003 and 2004 for the Best Album of the Year and Breakthrough Performance, and have performed with Julia Volkova and Lena Katina better known as t.A.T.u. In 2004 the group was awarded with Russian MTV Music Awards honors.



Smash!! is a duo consisting of two talented young people: Sergey Lazarev and Vlad Topalov. They started their career in show business at a young age in a children's band. After a few years, Vlad moved to England, and Sergey took over the band. Once Vlad came back, the boys decided to start a duo project. Their first recorded song together was the song "Belle" from "Notre Dame de Paris".



"We tried to record Belle in English first because none of us understood a word of French back then." Vlad says: "But then we realized it can only be sung in French, it was quite a task to record it". The recording was the duo's birthday present to Vlad's Dad.



The song made a huge impact that Russian Universal Music office started contacting and making negotiations with the group. It was from there that "SMASH" was born.

True enough, the group have been busy for the past two years. Their debut video "Should Have Loved You More" was released in February 2002. But it was after the release of Belle that the music audience, particularly the female population started to acknowledge them. Since the release of their debut album FREEWAY in March 2003, they have really smashed the sales of English language repertoire in Russia making them the number one pop band in the country.



FREEWAY was released in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, other 20 CIS and Baltic republics, as well as in 10 states of South East Asia, and has sold over 5 million copies around the globe since March, 2003.



Sadly, in December 2004, the duo split up due to unfortunate circumstances that cause Sergey Lazarev to leave. Sergey began a solo project of his own, while Vlad tried to continue with Smash!!, taking over as the lead singer and bringing in a group of talented musicians and back-up singers that he thought would fill Sergey's spot. After a year, however, Vlad realized that Smash!! was and will always be a duo of him and Sergey. Smash!! officially ceased to exist, even in title, and Vlad, too, began a solo project.



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