RIGA - Filip Kirkorov is a phenomenon. He's hugely popular in 11 time zones and has reportedly sold more than 60 million records. He's reinvented his hairstyle more than any man in history (with the possible exception of David Beckham) and is the Russian heir apparent to the all-time king of camp, Liberace. He also makes some truly ear-splittingly bad music.
Filip Kirkorov was born into the family of Bulgarian singer Bedros Kirkorov in 1967. His first appearance on TV was in November 1985 on the "Wider Circle" program, for which he sang in Bulgarian.
1989 was a decisive year for Kirkorov's career. He partnered the popular Russian singer Alla Pugacheva in her concert tour in Australia and Germany, which helped raise his profile among Russian emigrants. At the end of 1989 he decided to go it alone and released his first album 's "Filip" 's in1990.
Fame and fortune quickly followed and in 1994 he married Pugacheva. By the end of 2003 Kirkorov had released more than 20 albums, all of which met with great commercial success. Such was his popularity that he could easily fill out sports stadiums and arenas, and tickets for his concerts frequently sold out months ahead of time. But then he ruined everything in five spectacularly stupid minutes.
In the spring of 2004 Kirkorov was giving a press conference in Rostov na Donu, Russia, when he suddenly launched into a verbal attack on a female journalist. "I'm irritated by your pink shirt, your tits and your microphone. Get up and leave," he said to Irina Arojan when she asked him if there was any particular reason he'd been recording so many cover versions of late. "Goodbye, c**t," he screamed as Arojan walked out of the room.
The incident was a huge scandal in Russia. The "C" word is far stronger in Russian than its English equivalent. Many famous Russian singers and composers criticized Kirkirov for his behavior, and he lost a lot of fans due to his inexplicable outburst.
When Kirkorov came to perform in Latvia just a few months later, he could barely fill half the seats at Dzintari Concert Hall in Jurmala, and that was after the concert organizers had slashed ticket prices from 50 lats to 5 lats.
Some critics speculated that the whole sorry incident was merely a PR stunt gone badly wrong, but most were agreed that it was more a case of Kirkorov showing his real face in public. Kirkorov publicly apologized to Irina Arojan and has been on a charm offensive prior to his forthcoming pan-Baltic dates.
"When you become an object and a victim of the papparazi's unrealized sexual fantasies, it kills you, " Kirkorov said in an interview with Latvian television.
According to the singer, these will be his last-ever Baltic concerts, so it's all the more reason to go along and see his aptly named "Confessions of a Hooligan" tour. Kirkorov has promised that the shows will be unlike anything he's done before. Let's just hope that the real show is on the stage and not at the press conference.
