“I Was Falling Apart”: How Christine And The Queens Came Back From The Brink

“I started my project Christine and the Queens because I was a lonely teenager in my room trying to relate to people with video and music, and I was like…’Oh I’m back at it again’,” Héloïse Letissier laughs over the phone from her Paris home, where’s she’s in COVID-19 lockdown.

Despite the pandemic knocking at the door, Letissier is as busy as ever, maintaining a scheduling of daily livestreams on Instagram where she’ll talk with collaborators and fans, as well as the occasional performance — she took part in the Lady Gaga-curated One World: Together At Home concert, and Mark Ronson’s recent Love Lockdown livestream.

“It started as a way for me as a performer to keep a connection,” she says. “I think performers are as much addicted to the performance as the people watching it. We need to be able to share and experience things with the people watching. And I think giving myself an appointment every day at six added structure to my day.”

If that wasn’t enough, she’s also hard at work on her highly anticipated third album, the followup to 2018’s critically acclaimed Chris — which saw the band take over festival stages all over the world, and brought her to Australia’s shores for their first ever tour of the country.

“I keep saying ‘Let’s go back to Australia, let’s do the Australian tour again’,” she laughs. “Then my team keeps saying ‘Maybe do an album first’.”

“That tour was such a highlight of last year for me. Last year was really extreme and personally it was incredibly difficult for me, and the stage was the only thing kind of keeping me solid. But that tour in particular in Australia…Every show was so full of love it kind of saved me for the rest of the year, I’m not even joking.”

Anyone who was at one of the shows would agree — the love and devotion that Letissier’s fans have for her is palpable.

“It kind of made me really excited again about the perspective of the stage and excited to share,” she says. “I could feel there was a genuine exchange and we were meeting each other for the first time.”

Salvation, Destruction, Reinvention

A conversation with Letissier flows like a stream of consciousness, even with English being her second language. When I ask what made last year so difficult however, she pauses for the first time.

“As a performer, I almost feel like I have a duty,” she explains slowly. “You invest me with so much love and care and attention. When I perform I want to repay and embody in the right way.

“For me [Chris] was really joyful, campy, performative, feminist. I really love that record, and touring it was really great. It bought me a lot of salvation…but at some point in that year because I was falling apart personally, I felt too much of a stretch between what I was performing every night and what I was feeling.”

“I was falling apart personally, I felt too much of a stretch between what I was performing every night and what I was feeling.”

Instead of taking a step back, the artist channeled what she was feeling into her writing on tour. The result is the new EP La Vita Nuova, which “address[es] a sort of sense of loss or a complicated relationship ” across five tracks sung in French, English, and Italian. It was created with a sense of “urgency” says Latissier.

“I wrote ‘People I’ve Been Sad’ when I was still touring Chris, and I think that song kind of opened a wound, but a necessary one,” she says. “I was like ‘I have to address that wound and I have to be honest.’ The first thing I said to my record label was ‘We have to release that song as soon as possible.” People had to know what I was going through. Then I couldn’t stop and They all addressed a sort of sense of loss or a complicated relationship. Clearly they all address the emergency.”

Written and produced entirely by Letissier, the EP takes a step back from the character of Chris — the persona she’d portrayed on stage for almost two years during recording — and delivers an honest and raw portrait of the artist.

“I think that song kind of opened a wound, but a necessary one.”

“I think Chris was a construction…actually an armour,” she says. “This is what I loved about the record, and this is why I think that record was a bit less immediate sometimes. I remember doing Chris for a record and really loving being in it, but it’s true that La Vita Nouva is really about living as a true human being.”

Because of the intensely personal nature of the music, Letissier wanted to work with people they truly trusted — one of them being longtime friend Caroline Polachek, formerly of Chairlift. “I was actually working on the song [‘La Vita Nuova’] and it was really Italo-disco. I was singing in Italian about carnal desire. It’s literally like ‘I want to make love to you’ on that track,” she says.

“It’s a sex song, and I thought ‘Who could I sing it to, who could inspire such a feeling in me?’ But also who could be believable and elegant in Italian? Caroline was the only person I thought of who could make it effortless.”

“I’ve been such a fan of hers for a long long time,” she continues. “I totally respect her because I think she’s immensely clever as a full round artist and producer. She has that independent brilliance about her that is almost annoying… I opened for them when they were doing Chairlift. After that we started to write to each other as colleagues.

“We grew closer because we got to hang out and I felt more comfortable to invite her to the studio when she was here for Paris Fashion Week. I was like ‘Can you sing in Italian on that song?’ and she was so generous and happy to do it. She added these delicious ad libs that are really ‘Caroline’, I was so happy.”

I Disappear In Your Arms

Alongside the EP, Christine and the Queens released a short film of the same name, featuring music videos for all five tracks. Directed by frequent collaborator Colin Solal Cardo, the film sees Christine’s infatuated with a devilish character within the walls of the Palais Garnier opera house.

“I was having a conversation with [Colin] and sent him the tracks I was writing because I love to share things with him,” she says. “He immediately started sending me ideas, and I wanted him to do it with me. We had to work with people with whom we felt comfortable. It’s too crazy of a project to work with someone you have to tiptoe around. I was like ‘Colin you’re the only one I can be myself with right now so we are going to collaborate on this.’”

“Because I’m obsessed with art and I think he’s an obsessive person too, we kind of have that in common, the conversation never ceases. We’re both obsessed with the things we do as artists and we prefer doing the art than trying to live. Trying to live doesn’t really interest us so much for some reason, but obsessing over the art we make does.”

“I don’t know if I’m a superhero to anyone, but I still think about teenage, confused, lost ones who are having a hard time figuring it out.”

After the film was complete, Letissier felt she’d come full circle.

“The movie was really a gesture of love for this weird job of mine, why I started Christine and The Queens in the first place, and how I needed it,” she explains. “It was really humbling to work on that movie because it’s really theatrical but at the same time it’s about being naked. Because I experience sadness I have to create the most extravagant piece about it. It was really about how I do need art to find something and make some sense out of what I was experiencing.”

For Christine And The Queens, La Vita Nuova is a first step at taking their music further into the world of film — but that’s not to say it’s the first time they’ve put careful consideration into their music videos.

Last time we spoke, Letissier confessed that she’s always “want[ing] to make art that I was missing when I was younger.”  When I ask who they hoped would see this video and find what they had been “missing”, the singer explains that like the EP and film, it comes in layers.

“Did I have a particular person or group in mind? I don’t know,” she admits. “I think the movie has many different layers. I think somehow I wanted that movie to be seen by me first. It was me wanting to talk to myself and say ‘Just accept yourself a bit more, try to find and accept who you are as a performer.’ That was the first layer.

“The second layer was I remember being a teenager and escaping through pop-art, and art in general, I remember Björk, Bowie, Lorie Anderson, and Annie Lennox. I remember them as superheroes for me back then. So… I don’t know if I’m a superhero to anyone, but I still think about teenage, confused, lost ones who are having a hard time figuring it out.”

“I’m always hoping to be a link of freedom,” she says, as we near the end of our conversation. “I believe in the freedom of defining yourself when you’re ready, and if you never want to define yourself it’s fine.”

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La Vita Nuova is out now through Caroline Australia.

Patrick Campbell is a writer and DJ based in Melbourne. He is on Twitter. 

Photo Credit: Camille Vivier