Contents
The singer’s comeback happened suddenly. On the night of February 26, Zemfira presented a new, seventh studio album called Borderline. PSYCHOLOGIES experts listened to the album and shared their first impressions.
The album includes 12 tracks, including the previously released «Austin» and «Crimea», as well as «Abyuz», which was previously available only in a live recording.
The word Borderline in the title of the record is not only “border”, but also part of the phrase borderline personality disorder, that is, “borderline personality disorder”. Is it a coincidence? Or a kind of warning to listeners? It seems that each track of the new album can become both a trigger for long-forgotten pain and a path to light and freedom.
We asked Psychologies experts to share their impressions of Zemfira’s new work. And everyone heard her new record in their own way.
“Yanka Diaghileva sang about this back in the late 80s”
Andrey Yudin — gestalt therapist, trainer, psychologist
On his Facebook page (an extremist organization banned in Russia), Andrei shared his thoughts after listening to the album:
1. After studying somatic psychotherapy, it is no longer possible to listen to such music. Empathic resonance with the performer’s body (and everything that is accumulated in it) completely interrupts any impressions from music and lyrics.
2. Yanka Diaghileva sang about all this back in the late 80s, who, shortly before her death, brilliantly described this type of creativity in the song “Sold”:
Commercially successful publicly die
On stones to break a photogenic face
Ask humanly, look into the eyes
Good passersby…
My death is sold.
Sold.
3. Borderline personality disorder, eng. borderline personality disorder, after which the album is named, is the easiest personality disorder to treat with the best prognosis (but only when compared to the other two major personality disorders, narcissistic and schizoid).
“She is extremely sensitive to the conjuncture, time”
Vladimir Dashevsky — psychotherapist, candidate of psychological sciences, regular contributor to Psychologies
Zemfira has always been a performer of very high quality pop music for me. She is extremely sensitive to the conjuncture, time. Starting from the very first track that became popular — “And you have AIDS, which means we will die …”, — in principle, she continues to sing the same song. And Zemfira not only forms the agenda, but reflects it.
There is definitely one plus from the fact that her new album turned out like this: borderline personality disorder will “step into the people”, perhaps people will be more interested in what is happening to their psyche. I think that in a sense, this diagnosis will become “fashionable”, as it once happened with bipolar disorder. Or maybe it already has.
Irina Gross — clinical psychologist
Zemfira on repeat means we come to life. We die, but are born again and again, each time in a new capacity.
The same voice, the same teenage prayers, a little on the edge, but already with some sort of adult hoarseness.
Zemfira grew up and realized that she was different? Are we growing up? Will we ever have to say goodbye to our parents, to our mother? Is there really no one to address their claims to? And now, on the contrary, all claims will be brought to us ourselves?
Zemfira seems to have more questions for Austin than for abuse as a phenomenon. She sings about abuse calmly and with tenderness, while Austin is more annoying, next to him there is more tension. After all, he is specific, he spits on feelings, infuriates, and he has a face. And what the abuse looks like in general, we do not know. We only encountered Austin’s toughness and thought we were just unlucky.
Then, when we were wounded and hurt, they didn’t know this word, but, of course, we all remember Austin. And now we are already sure that, having met him again, we will not become his victim, we will not sit on his leash. Now we will find the strength in ourselves to fight back and run away, because we no longer like the pain, we are no longer proud of it.
Yes, this is not what we expected. Together with Zemfira, we wanted to return to childhood, to youth, to the past, in order to again arrange a “war with this world”, to break free from the chain in a teenage rebellion. But no, we go further and further, in a circle, along these repetitive, familiar rhythms-cycles — seemingly familiar, but still different. We are no longer teenagers, we have already seen and survived a lot of things “this summer”.
And it’s not true that “nothing will happen to us.” Will definitely happen. We want a lot more. We will also have a beautiful coat, and poems on the embankment, even if they are bad. We have already learned to forgive «bad» verses to ourselves and others. We will still “come-leave-come back” and wait.
After all, this was not the end, but just another border, a line that we crossed together.
Zemfira, like any other great author, reflects reality — simply, sincerely, as it is. Her voice is the voice of the collective consciousness. Do you feel how it connects all of us in the borderline that we have already lived? Yes, it was not easy: my hands were trembling, and it seemed that I no longer had the strength to fight. But we have survived and matured.
Her songs help us to digest and understand the experience, with her creativity she provokes mass reflection. It turns out that we can do everything — even the borderline states of the psyche. But breakdowns are in the past, so you can cross out this word.
Zemfira grew up with us, crossed the line of the “middle of the road”, but still touches to the quick. So, there will still be: the ocean, and the stars, and a friend from the south.
«What is reality — such are the lyrics»
Marina Travkova — psychologist
It seems to me that with an eight-year pause, Zemfira laid inflated expectations in the public. The album is considered “under a microscope”: new meanings are found in it, it is criticized, it is praised. Meanwhile, if we imagine that he would have come out a year later, it would have been the same Zemfira.
How different it is from a musical point of view, let the music critics judge. As a psychologist, I noticed only one change: language. The language of pop psychology, and its own «wiring» in the text: the accusation of the mother, ambivalence.
However, I’m not sure that there is a second and third meaning. It seems to me that the lyrics use words that have become commonplace, everyday — and at the same time they are still “bulging” enough to be read as a characteristic of the times. After all, people now often exchange information at a friendly meeting about what their diagnoses are, what psychologists they have, and discuss antidepressants.
This is our reality. What a reality — such lyrics. After all, oil is really pumping.