Soviet-era pop icon Yury Shatunov, a member of the boyband Laskovy Mai (The Tender May), which was extremely popular across the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, has died at the age of 48 in the Moscow region.
Shatunov's press secretary Arkady Kudryashov said on June 23 that Shatunov died of a heart attack overnight as he was being transported to a hospital after complaining of severe chest pains.
Born in Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan in 1973, Shatunov lost his mother when he was 11 and was placed in an orphanage in the city of Orenburg.
At the age of 13, he became the frontman for Laskovy Mai, a group of orphans brought together to form the band by Russian songwriter, composer, and musician Sergei Kuznetsov.
The group's first album skyrocketed on the music charts across the Soviet Union. Their style was a mix of Western disco pop music and plain lyrics sung by teenagers with jazzy voices.
Their best-known hits included Belye Rozy (The White Roses) and Sedaya Noch (The Gray Night). The group broke up in 1992.
In 1991, amid an economic downfall before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Shatunov moved to Germany. He returned to Russia several years later and continued his solo career as a singer but never reached the same level of popularity he enjoyed as a teenager.