HAPPENING
THIS WEEK’S MUSE
HÉLOÏSE ADÉLAÏDE LETISSIER
“I love people that are question marks. I love people that don’t have answers and are just trying to cope with it. I love people that just don’t tick boxes. There is a grace in them I can’t really find elsewhere.”
Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier, known professionally as Christine and the Queens or sometimes just Chris, is a French singer and songwriter who has achieved mainstream success whilst crucially retaining creative and artistic freedom.
Letissier was born in 1988 in Nantes, a large city on the Loire River, western France. As a child her artistic interests were encouraged by her parents; she began learning piano aged four and classical dance at five. They also encouraged her reading, and writers like Sarah Waters and Judith Butler served as inspiration during Letissier’s youth. Creativity and personal expression continued through her education, attending the Department of Arts at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon.
On a trip to London in 2010 she visited the renowned Soho nightclub Madame Jojo’s, she was so inspired by the attitude, style, and musicianship of the drag queens performing, she left her studies in France to begin her own musical journey. Early on, this journey was named Christine and the Queens.
Since releasing her first album—2014’s Chaleur Humaine—Letissier has come to prominence as a creator and performer of beautifully melodic electronic pop, with an emphasis on instrumentation that gave the 1980s its distinct sound. Into that sound she weaves a soft, emotional thread, creating a fresh and more palatable sound than—from a 21st century perspective at least—the sometime mechanical coldness of her heroes such as Janet Jackson, Prince, and Madonna.
Her music has been labelled by music critics as pop, synthpop, electropop, indie pop, experimental pop, and art pop, while she described her own work as “freakpop.” She often talks of story-telling through her albums are chapters, there are multiple characters and, endearingly, she’ll often move in closer to whisper dramatic asides, like a theatre actor breaking the fourth wall. This performative nature has led to confusion as to who the real Héloïse is. “There can be a weird conversation around sincerity when it’s being used via a character,” she admits. “It’s always odd to me when people say: ‘Where does Héloïse finish and Chris start?’ It’s the same thing. I’m just putting a theatrical form to my expression.”
Lyrically she is much further away from that decade, often developing a very personal narrative in her songs. She confronts the shame she felt as a young queer woman, and in an age of gender-fluidity prejudice and social-media-induced anxiety, her songs embrace ideas close to her heart – the awkwardness of sexuality, of feeling an outsider, or the unconfident individual looking for their place in the world.
Her songs are largely contained in her two albums—her second, Chris was released in 2018—and help filter some of the stresses her lifestyle, sexuality, profession, and success attracts—unkind press, misinformation, prejudice, ignorance.
“The first album was born out of the frustration of being an aberration in society, because I was a young queer woman. The second was really born out of the aberration I was becoming, which was a powerful woman—being lustful and horny and sometimes angry, and craving for this will [help me] to just own everything a bit more and apologize a bit less.”
Sometimes Letissier’s songs address an idea head on, other times in a more generalist, universal way. And sometimes she sings about lighter, more throw-away subjects. Part of the journey that started in 2010 has been to find a balance in her life. Whichever direction she takes a song, finding positivity and a place to be herself in the world has been partly achieved through her persona Christine and the Queen.
“I can’t wait to grow even older,” she says. “I don’t remember my 20s as a good place. I want to grow old in this industry.”
HAPPENING
Eight Wednesdays, beginning June 29,
from 9:30am–noon
Introduction to Wheelthrowing
With Holly Heaslip
The basics – and a few secrets! – of wheelthrowing will be covered.
$350 – Member, $390 – Non-Member
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