The singer Kazhanna grew up on gothic post-punk, trained as an actress, and worked in a kitchen until her videos started racking up millions of views on TikTok. In conversation with Maya Baklanova, she talks about her path, her music, antidepressants, and sincerity — a trait that increasingly defines the new generation of artists.

Maya: Tell me how your musical taste took shape — where did you find music and inspiration? Did you mostly dig things up on your own, or was it through friends, some kind of community?

Kazhanna: I'm a goth, after all — I'm Kazhanna. I really love arthouse; I've been watching all kinds of interesting films since school. At some point I got into Ukrainian culture, started watching obscure films.

As for music — I always listened mostly to foreign stuff. I can't even say exactly where I found it: some popular things, plus just random pages where you could dig deeper. There was a ton on SoundCloud. And of course we were all sitting on VKontakte — we'd find things through the public pages too: "Oh, have you seen this?" — "Have you heard that?"

Now, thank God, there's Spotify — the new generation barely has to search for anything anymore. Back then you really sat there and dug out your own stuff — and that was cool too.

My friend and I really loved goth music — post-punk, goth rock, darkwave. Then I started writing things myself, experimenting, and the first ones actually had those goth motifs.

Honestly, I didn't have any one method — it all happened very chaotically. I'd stumble on something by accident, then YouTube would throw something similar at me, and that's how it gradually came together.

Maya: You studied theater. Why did you decide to go that route?

Kazhanna: I thought: I can sing — so why enroll in vocals? Academic singing, choir — that doesn't really interest me. I had no musical education, I didn't finish music school, and I didn't play any instrument. But acting really interested me. I thought: I'll give it a try. For most of the time, a lot of things in my life happened randomly.

But it worked out that I ended up with a really great master — the head of our course — and we were the only ones staging plays in the theater. So I don't regret anything. And my mom supported me a lot: she worked hard to pay for my tuition. And I worked hard too, to have something to live on.

Maya: Does your acting training help you now — with your stage persona?

Kazhanna: It helps a lot — with the synthesis of genres, for example. In theater you need to be able to do so much. A play isn't just acting or directing, it's a lot more.

Very often musicians are guilty of just singing or just playing. And that's not enough. For me personally — it's not enough. I'm interested in performers as a whole. Not just listening to a song, but seeing how the person wrote it, what they were thinking about. In that sense, acting training is very useful. My backing vocalist is an actress, for example, and she helps me bring my physical, movement-based vision of the music to life.

I love going to the theater, but I didn't find myself there as an actress. I prefer directing. But studying directing on top of everything else… I can't be bothered.

Maya: Well, you did become a director — first of your TikToks…

Kazhanna: I mean more serious things. Theater really helps you think more broadly. Like, I write the script for a concert — and at first it's just a stream of consciousness. And then I decode it for myself. It kind of comes together on its own, and then I look — and these actions, the form I've wrapped it in, fit conceptually and complement the music. I'm not claiming I'm staging plays. But at least the foundation is there — in a good way.

Maya: Did theater give you this multi-genre quality?

Kazhanna: Yes, a broader vision. Not just — how to position the musicians, how to set the lighting. Even the VJing — I just take videos off YouTube. It could be an old collection of someone's family photos — and it fits. You don't have to commission VJing for a thousand million bucks. It's all about progress. As they say, laziness is the engine of evolution. And for me poverty is the engine of my personal evolution. I look for simple, cheap solutions, and then sometimes it even seems to me it comes out better that way.

Maya: What jobs did you have before you devoted yourself fully to the stage?

Kazhanna: There was a lot. I'm not from Kyiv, so during my studies I had to rent a place. And I worked side jobs. It's easier for me to work and buy myself something decent than to really skimp on myself. If I want to live like a normal teenager — go to concerts, hang out with friends — then I just go and work.

I worked at a fast-food place — rolling shawarma. I worked at a children's-goods warehouse as an order picker — walking around assembling orders. I worked in restaurants. I sold ice cream. My last job was kitchen assistant, that was already in 2022. I frosted cakes, helped in the kitchen, and in the morning I also had to go around and mop the floor.

And it was very hard on me morally. Because I'm studying to be an actress, final year, with a diploma play where I'm playing one of the leads — and at the same time I'm mopping floors in the morning. But they paid really well there, and I needed the money. Maybe back then I just didn't value myself the way I do now, because I could have gone to castings, for instance. But the thing I hate most is groveling and trading on my looks.

And honestly — sometimes it was easier to mechanically roll that shawarma than to go around begging for roles. Especially since the kitchen paid much more than acting did. For me, the experience of "lying around as a corpse in a field" on a shoot wasn't as valuable as just working in a kitchen and getting three times the money.

Now that's not really my story anymore. Maybe I'm just slowly getting old. I can't do it like I used to. I went on tour and realized it. I used to take the bus from Odesa to Kyiv, sleep three hours — and keep going. Now I didn't sleep for three days, then slept 17 hours straight, and my gastritis flared up on top of it.

But by now I already have enough skills. I can find myself some other occupation. It just took time. But I still don't choose comfort: that's not my story.

Maya: Your career began at a moment when TikTok had already become a powerful tool. Earlier, artists had to break through for years via radio or TV shows. And here you post a video — and it can take off immediately. How did you experience that yourself?

Kazhanna: Everyone starts that way now. Even if you take artists who used to go on all those talent shows. BRYKULETS or Jerry Heil, for example — they started before TikTok too. But their songs still blow up now precisely through this platform.

Essentially, today an artist without TikTok can't really spread. You can get on radio, somewhere else — but that doesn't work the same way anymore. Boy doesn't play on a single radio station, for example, but on YouTube it's ten million views. So TikTok is just a necessity now.

Maya: You said you were afraid of becoming a one-video person — the cucumber-butt one. When it took off, did you feel you now had to prove somehow that you're not just about that?

Kazhanna: I already proved it. Because always, when something works out for you, the people who knew you and didn't really like you start arguing that it was just the algorithms that pushed you. People still tell me I'm a one-track artist. Like: "Well, you've got Boy — 10 million, and that's it." But if you look at the other songs — they've got two, three, four million each. I have a ton of tracks that took off. It's just a way to devalue you.

But I already proved it, first and foremost to myself. At some point it became clear: I come in with an idea — and the process kicks off. I bring a joke — people laugh. I bring a thought — and it comes to life. It's just my thing. So I've calmed down about it.

And it's also funny that people think I've already shown everything. I haven't even shown 20 percent of myself yet. Seriously. There hasn't even been a track I'd sit over for months, the way people do for Eurovision. All my songs are written very fast, almost in passing. It's just the extreme point of some big thought. I'm still just messing around.

What's important to know about me — I treat all of this as one big joke. I don't have this "dead serious, lifelong goal" thing. Look at how we live. They are literally trying to kill us. We've all gone a little crazy. And the upside of this craziness of mine — everything's a joke to me.

For me it's roughly like: money came in — ha, funny. Money ran out — damn, also funny. Well okay, let's see how I get out of this. For me it's all a quest. Maybe because I used to take everything too seriously. Or maybe the antidepressants have kicked in. One of the two.

Maya: How long have you been on antidepressants?

Kazhanna: Six months. Going to a psychiatrist is a top idea. It's not shameful at all if there's a need. If therapy isn't helping and you feel anxiety — go. Don't be afraid.

Maya: Why did you say "shameful"? Do you hear judgment?

Kazhanna: Yes. Name someone, say, among Ukrainian public figures who doesn't hide that they're on antidepressants. I can't name anyone. I personally know who takes what, but people still don't talk about it publicly. And here I am honestly telling everyone: what side effects I have, what's happening with me.

This is about sincerity, by the way. Once I posted a story: I was sitting at some singer's concert, thinking — damn, this is cool. But I probably won't be able to fill the Sports Palace anytime soon. And at that point my track Boy was already number one in the charts, and at the same time I had a maxed-out credit limit on my card. And I wrote: "What difference does it make how popular you are if you've got an open line of credit."

Someone posted a screenshot on Threads — half a million views. People were shocked that a Ukrainian singer could have debts. And right away they started inventing that it was because of gambling or something. Well, that's nonsense. Are we living in different countries or what?

Maya: When the thing with the label happened and you wrote about it openly — was that the same sincerity, or more of an emotional impulse?

Kazhanna: More just an emotional reaction. But for me that is sincerity. It actually annoys me that people complicate this story so much. They can't just accept that a person had a nervous breakdown from overexertion, from constant pressure, from debts. I've told this already, I won't repeat it. It surprises me that people look everywhere for some grand scheme, a PR move. I don't have a PR team and never have. The label did PR in terms of releases, but there was no personal PR.

And honestly — it seems to me that hardly any of the new artists right now sit around dreaming up PR stunts. That's bullshit. I literally laugh at it.

These days PR is needed more as crisis management — so you don't blurt out anything unnecessary. And when they PR just the artist's personality, not the music and not the releases — that, in my opinion, means the person simply has nothing else to say. It's like with meanings in songs: if they have to be explained — it's a shitty song. Good music will become popular on its own.

Maya: There's a sense that sincerity is generally one of the traits of the new generation of artists. Do you feel that too?

Kazhanna: People often ask me: "What are you like in real life?" Just the same as on stage. It's just that on stage it's wrapped in a bit more form. I don't have the energy to make things up. I walk around the city in my pajamas.

It seems to me this is also about our generation. Not because we're so awesome, but because we're genuinely overloaded. Even without the war I had a feeling of sensory overload with the world. And with the war — all the more. I just don't have the strength to be someone else or to hide anything. So the only option is to be sincere, to share emotions. I'm not one of those people who'll hide what bothers them in the closet. If I'm hurt or I disagree — I'll say it directly, even publicly. And let them write that I'm hysterical or too candid. Well, get used to it. The world is going to be like this. The world won't be under lock and key anymore. We're getting rid of this "don't air your dirty laundry" logic.

I don't think this "keep quiet" thing is in our mentality. We're often reproached for being kind of gloomy, distrustful, frightened. Yes, maybe that's there somewhere. But at the same time we're very sincere. And the Revolution of Dignity proves it — we didn't stay silent.

Maya: You call yourself a pop artist. But genres are mixing now. What is pop to you?

Kazhanna: Our emphases are just very skewed. Pop is often read as estrada — old-school variety pop. And honestly, for the most part I don't really like Ukrainian pop music — it's too simple. At the same time, a lot of artists who get called indie are actually pop too.

If we're talking about my music, I have hooks everywhere. I don't go into the experimental direction — more into a structured, commercial form. So that's probably why it reads as pop. But it wasn't some deliberate strategy.

It seems to me people often overcomplicate things: they think about genres, strategies, PR. But really you just do it the way you feel. Listen widely, watch widely — and then you don't have to specially invent genres. The hard part of this path is that it looks very simple: just be yourself. But in reality it's much harder.

Maya: Do you feel the rules of the industry — or do you just do what you want?

Kazhanna: It's much easier to learn the rules the industry lives by and make them work for you. Maybe there'll be commerce in that, but there won't always be art. A lot of performers here have just learned to write tracks so they go viral. But there's often nothing alive in it anymore. And sometimes it really weighs on me that so much is expected of me. Like: "Come on, Kazhanna, you're our hope. We wish you a sold-out Sports Palace."

And I think: what do I need that Palace for? What will change in my life if I fill the biggest venue? I'd rather do a small concert, but with really cool directing, with actors, with some concept. We'd film it beautifully, post it on YouTube — and it would spread. For me that's much more interesting. I don't want the Sports Palace just because it's supposedly the next step for an artist. Who even decided that everyone has to want it? I just don't want to pressure myself and walk well-trodden paths if they don't suit me.

I realized this even from TikTok. At first I tried to make sketches, to joke around, the way others do. Those sketches are still lying around somewhere. But they didn't take off — because it wasn't me. And then I just turned the camera around and started talking my own nonsense, raising hell, showing my charisma — and right away the millions of views came. And I realized that my value is probably in the fact that I myself am some kind of artistic act. And out of that the music, and the videos, and everything else is born. It's not about format. Not about whether it's sketches or songs. It's about inner fullness and aliveness.

I could do theater too, and other things. I'm very interested in fashion, the fashion industry, for example. I even think that in a parallel universe I learned to sew long ago and have my own brand. It's just that for now I'm doing what's more interesting to me right now.

It seems to me you don't need to look for any secrets to success. The only thing that really matters is discipline. And everything else is finding your own inner streak, your own source. The thing that inspires you yourself and that you can share.

Maya: And money, for you — is it a tool or a goal?

Kazhanna: We're talking about sincerity: money is great. And it's not shameful to take money for your work. I've been through enough crap in life that I've really earned the right to make decent money. And I never devalue work at all. Not mine, not anyone else's.

You know what wealth is to me? It's having power over money — the ability to decide for yourself where to direct those resources. Helping animal shelters, for example. I'd definitely help animals a lot. At one concert there was a situation like this. I address the crowd from the stage: "Friends, please, there's a fundraiser for my boyfriend's unit in Azov. Let's at least give two hryvnias each. You can give ten, you can give fifty. You can even give a hundred thousand." And one woman actually goes and donates a hundred thousand. For me she's just a role model. I want to be well-off enough that, in the moment when a fundraiser is a hundred thousand short of closing, I can just say: "That's it, I'm closing it."

I want the ability to direct money where it's needed. It would be cool if the right people got rich — and we could change some things. Maybe that sounds a bit naive. But really I want very simple things: to help the kitties. And to eat well.

Photography & video: Oleksandra Lianna & Anton Cherniak @illuav @kanoge_ 

Style: Anastasiia Gutnik @gut9anastasiiaa

Hair: Pavel Lotnik @pavellotnik 

Make up: Kateryna Tokareva @tokareva_mua 

Talent: Kazhanna 

Producer: Sasha Krivosheia @sashakrvsh @baby___prod 

Creative direction, production, set design: Baby Prod @baby___prod

Interwiew Maya Baklanova