"Melodramas" is the first result of Kazhannaʼs full-fledged collaboration with the “Pomitni” label. The beginning of their relationship was accompanied by a loud scandal — the singer accused her former label “Nova Music” and its owner Jerry Heil of abandoning her alone.
The scandal developed chaotically, in a series of reels and stories, but the point of the claims was the following: I write hits that collect millions of streams, but I still have neither decent earnings nor investments in my career.
The release of “boy” in December last year was like a demonstration of her rightness. By all accounts, it was a huge hit, but “Nova Music” failed to shoot even a simple video for it. It was at this time that the label owner Jerry Heil was spending many times more on her shows and videos than before: the National Selection for Eurovision, the single “Catharticus”, the epic show “Dzherelo” at the Palace of Sports (directed by the most expensive director of the Ukrainian pop scene Alan Badoev).
Kazhannaʼs fans, and later — the entire thread, were outraged as if it were about the exploitation of child labor: “give the girl freedom!”, “let her go!”, “have some conscience!”.
“Nova Music” gave vague explanations, where among the lines it was read: “We were open to an adequate dialogue, but Kazhanna was not.”
Then a wave of expertise poured in, where industry experts, including me, explained that even a successful song does not bring in enough money from streaming to shoot a high-quality video for it.
At that time, the video on YouTube collected 2 million streams, so its royalties amounted to approximately $6 000. A standard pop video with 2-3 locations and a show ballet costs $10 000 or more.
So in March 2026, Kazhanna signed a contract with the “Pomitni” label.
Since Kazhanna complained that “Nova Music” was not investing enough in her work, after the label change, the audience concluded: "Now she will finally have a video."
Кажанна / You Tube
Well, “Pomitni” really shot a video for the singer, but instead of the expected transition to a new level, Kazhanna suddenly lost her magic.
She seems to be the same, but somehow different. Both the new track and the music video are a clichéd, outdated, secondary pop product that is dissonant with the wild charm of the young star. The chorus of the song is like something from the demos that were rejected by Nadya DOROFEEVA, the labelʼs main artist.
What we hear in “Melodramas” is not music, itʼs just a "music-containing product".
Music grows from a single musical tree, where every drum beat, bass line, or processed guitar riff carries meaning, embodying information about hundreds or even thousands of recordings where a similar sound has appeared before.
Assembling one’s own sonic puzzle, discovering a unique sonic formula, and engaging in a creative dialogue with other scenes, countries, and eras — this is what it means to create music in the 21st century.
The sound of Kazhanna is so conventional that the ear of a music lover simply does not recognize or identify anything. There are barely perceptible hints of something “youthful” of the 1984 model (post-punk? soft rock?), but they do not give rise to any allusions or memories.
It is as if you are sniffing perfume, but it only smells of a spirit. In the era of AI music generators like “Suno”, live sound producers can no longer afford to work so superficially.
Kazhanna, Tucha, Grisana, Victoria Niro, and other artists of the "new wave" produce derivative music of very low quality. It is on the level of Brazilian tekno-brega, Egyptian electro-shaabi, or Indonesian funkot — cheap, hastily cobbled-together copies of Western hits, mixed with a touch of local flavor.
When you present such a weak product, there is nothing left but to scream.
So the artists scream and attack — an aggressive manifesto can be felt in every song. The one is a hyper-bitch, the another one is the brandest brand, and the another one is a real high level monster.
Kazhanna screams a little less, she takes it with facial expressions and body language. She bares her teeth, makes sharp nods from her shoulder, rests her forehead against the camera lens. In short, she demonstrates audacity, self-confidence.
An audience that happily consumes a music-based product that instead of meaning is a continuous pumping of oneʼs own ego is recruited easily and quickly. For a while, it agrees that "youʼre a badass, youʼre the coolest one", but in the end, this audience makes the artist hostage to his own viral success.
This is a problem that neither “Pomitni”, nor “Nova Music”, nor Kazhanna will solve. The root of this problem is visible in the comments under the new video. Fans ask the singer not to shoot expensively at all, not to dress up, not to sing cute songs (and "Melodramas" is a cute, romantic song about love). They say to shoot on the phone as before.
Кажанна / You Tube
In other words — [they ask to] remain a freak and a clown who entertains us. To be more featherheaded than we are. Then you will get “a like” from us. As a PR person, I have seen this in my work many times.
A textbook example is the rise and fall of Alyona Alyona. While the artist is playing the fool, she gets crazy organic. When the revision of the social contract between the artist and the listener begins, and when the artist says: “I am no longer your free clown. Buy tickets and come to the concert,” then the multi-million audience suddenly disappears.
Or [it] declares demands: no need for clips, a label and add-ons, and continue to shoot on your phone. No need for business, give it away for free. [The] we will take you “a like” from us.
But is “a like” a currency? It seems that it is, because behind Kazhanna there has already gathered a bunch of artists who agree to anything for the sake of “a like”. The modern follower understands this well.
This is a strategic dead end that concerns the music industry as a whole.
In Ukraine, where the concert market is “in a coma”, such problems look even more acute. Now the audience is putting forward conditions to Kazhanna: hang out next to me, like you did before, on TikTok.
What should Kazhanna answer? Like, no, Iʼm moving on, to a higher league, to another audience? Well, welcome. Another audience has just returned from The Weekndʼs concert in Poland. What will you show?
Kazhanna will not get a fashionable, solvent, seduced audience, for which it makes sense to shoot not only on a phone, but also to create stylish images, have a team and a label. Just as Jerry Heil did not get it before.
Itʼs because with a different audience, other evaluation criteria appear — you have to make music. You have to work carefully and for a long time on each song. It seems unreal if it is needed to release a song every month. So it turns out a vicious circle.
Even with DOROFEEVA, “Pomitni” couldn’t break this vicious circle. Her trendy Western-oriented single “Feel the Heat” failed miserably and was ridiculed on social networks.
Itʼs because it’s simply impossible to live in a world of advertising integrations, constantly please a mass audience, and then suddenly (!) make high-quality modern pop at the level of Calvin Harris on the first try.
If Kazhanna intends to move beyond the role of a meme character and a TikTok hooligan who only takes shocking, grimacing, grills, sloppy makeup, and a spoiled flow, then she has a lot of work ahead of her. The label will not do this work for her.
It is indeed noticeable, but it does not yet know how to convert the spontaneous TikTok success of its subscribers into a high-quality, modern, interesting product. It does not yet imagine how to work with an ignorant young audience in the long term, how to develop its taste and expand its space for maneuver. Itʼs because no one has this idea yet.
Кажанна / You Tube