About TARABAROVA
Svitlana Vasylivna Tarabarova was born on 26 July 1990 in Kherson, in a large family: her father worked at a shipyard, her mother taught kindergarten. She first wanted to be a driver, then a singer; she studied piano and voice, and at thirteen danced in the troupe Oasis. After school she moved to Kyiv and graduated with honours from the Municipal Academy of Variety and Circus Arts. In 2008, on Factory of Stars 2, she performed as Alisa, finished second under Natalia Mohylevska, and with Regina Todorenko, Lina Mitsuki and Olena Kushnirenko joined Real O. Four years of tours under a borrowed first name — then the 2012 exit. She later called the split with her producer a blow to the head that made her grow up. The solo career came back under her own surname, not Alisa. Do not confuse her with Olga Tarabarova, the Kursk philharmonic singer.
Spring 2012 brought the clip “Vira sylna” and the web series Eight Weeks of Revelations — live diaries without gloss. The breakthrough was “My verim v lyubov,” written in Odessa in summer 2013: Marius Vaysberg heard the demo, it became the soundtrack of Love in the Big City 3, and in 2014 it won Song of the Year. The debut album Myr vsem packed thirteen tracks and a cover of hundreds of strangers’ photos; the second, Viriu. Znaiu, after Crimea and the east, held “Khochu zhyty bez viiny,” the unofficial anthem “Povertaisya zhyvym,” and hospital gigs from Novoaidar to Shyrokyne. At the 2016 Eurovision national selection with “Never again” she stopped one step from the final and asked fans to vote for Jamala. Then came “Svitlo v tobi” for film, the acoustic Naodynci, an engagement ring and “Ya kazhu tak,” “Dobre z toboiu,” “Tsunami,” the “Manifest” video with seventy-five people and two hundred lights, the neo-musical “Meni kazkovo” with five-month-old Ivan on set because feeding could not wait. With Yarmak she cut “Voin” for Armed Forces Day; the brand svitlo V tobi printed her lyrics on clothes. The Followers Only tour admitted only subscribers with a DM code.
On 11 October 2016 she married her concert director Oleksii Bondar: an outdoor ceremony by the Praha restaurant near Kyiv’s Expocenter, her father walking her to the groom. They had met across an age gap — she about twenty-one, he thirty-seven, with a ten-year first marriage behind him. The romance began as friendship and several breakups until she told him to surrender. Son Ivan arrived on 9 September 2018, the same day as “Dobre sertse”; the album 23:25 was written almost entirely while she was pregnant. Mariia was born on 23 September 2020, Polina on 19 April 2023, already during the full-scale war, unplanned; relatives did not support it, and she revealed the youngest’s name in a video singing Boombox’s “Polina.” Her father was ill, her sister would not leave their parents in occupied Kherson — people asked why she had not evacuated them; she asked who would have gone to the rallies. In a 2026 interview she said they get up at 6:30, spend an hour driving children to school, quarrel from fatigue, she apologises first, and they do not talk divorce. After the strike of 28 August 2026 the family moved the children from their house in Dmytrivka, Bucha district, to a quieter region.
In August 2022 she received the Order of Princess Olga, third class. From 2023 she has been music producer of Ukraine’s Junior Eurovision selection and writer of entries that reached the international final: Anastasiia Dymyd’s “Kvitka” (5th), Artem Kotenko’s “Hear Me Now” (3rd), Sofiia Nersesian’s “Motanka” (2nd in 2025 — Ukraine’s best result since 2013). “Mamyne namysto” grew into a family musical with selection finalists; she wrote “Rozminui moie sertse” for Kolia Serha. The catalogue did not freeze into an anthem: the 2023 children’s album, 2024’s Moya ostannya nervova klityna, and on 2 July 2026 Lypen v yii ochakh with “Maybe,” “Nashe lito” and “Budu shchaslyvoiu.” In 2026 she commentated the second semi-final of the adult Eurovision. The pop she mixes with pop-rock, funk and soul she long ago named the light side of music: not a slogan on a cover, but the household of a Kherson mother of three who still writes hits from the kitchen after the school run.
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