Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's always odd to me when people say, 'Where does Heloise finish and Chris start?' It's the same thing. I'm just putting a theatrical form to my expression.
I've always really been interested in observing people's postures, the way they speak with their hands, the way they communicate things with their body language.
When I was young, I would write all the time. Novels, plays, and poems. It's like a disease - my life is filled with fantasies, and I have to write them all down.
When the image that I built around the first album was crumbling, it was scary: the risk pays off, but the resonances of that risk are not always easy to deal with.
I wanted 'Comme si' to immediately indicate that something changed in my life, mainly because I became the hero of my own desires instead of just dreaming about them.
Christine was me wanting to break free. I was tired of being prissy and shrinking and apologising all of the time, so I created a character that could be daring for me.
I always knew I wanted to be a woman in men's clothing because I just feel good like that. I feel like I'm taking a different space: I move differently; I'm more at ease.
I think I used Christine, who is my stage character, as an excuse to finally be myself, as if I needed to say, 'Oh this character is going to be the woman I wanted to be.'
I think, from the beginning, I was healed and inspired by queer culture, and Christine and the Queens, as an idea from the beginning, is queer because it questions the norm.
The first album was a coming-of-age album - I don't like the phrase, but when you listen to it, you can tell I was having a hard time, that I wasn't socially relating to people.
Because I'm experimenting so much with gender-bending and listening to everything that happens to me in terms of genderless energies, I have a hard time finding partners that can match me.
When I started to write music, I desperately wanted to relate to people. But when I became famous, I could relate less. I thought, 'Oh, am I trapped in my own creation?' I was really lonely.
Christine, as a stage character, is just a way for me to be more daring, to be more out of the box, to be stronger and to use everything that could weigh me down like a fuel, like an energy.
When I have to take phone calls, I start to sweat and panic. Being on the phone is so weird - hearing a voice without seeing the face so you can't really know the intention behind the voice.
When you dance, you own everything you have. You are really in your own body. You do it with your muscles and your bones and your weight and your height - it's how to love yourself by moving.
Before I created Christine, I was actually really girly. Maybe I was trying to hide something, but I was trying too hard to be a girl, and I didn't know what it meant. I was afraid of being myself.
For me, the male gaze is oppressive. And I hope if we are building a female gaze that it's inclusive, and it's about pure desire and not how I want people to look in order for them to be desired by me.
That's pretty much how I feel on stage, like I can let go of all kinds of baggage, or even disappear and change outfits. I want to remind people that they can grant themselves the license to do the same.
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.
I see theatre everywhere, actually. We're all kind of performing a version of ourselves every morning by choosing the clothes and how we appear - but the stage is so emphasising that I really feel comfortable in it.
Music is contagious and everywhere and democratic, and that's what drew me in. I was interested in acting and being a director, but one of the things that bored me about theatre was that it was not accessible to everyone.
In real life, I feel tiny and quite embarrassed all the time. But when people come up to me in France and want to talk to Christine, it's okay. It's cool. Because they're really talking about themselves, their own Christines.
You have to work with your body when you dance; you can't shy away from your physicality. For me, it's really linked to an incandescent way of accepting yourself and projecting. The dancing was at the core from the beginning.
I have Googled so many things related to possible diseases, and it's always ridiculous. Like, 'My toe is hurting. Do I have cancer?' 'I have a scratch in my eye. Am I going to die soon?' 'Is eating a soup going to make me die?'
I broke up with my first girlfriend because I was out of love. I was crushing so hard on her for a whole year, and I finally I got to be with her, and the interest vanished. I'm a terrible person. I was 17, and she was in my class.
When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.
I'm kind of obsessed with Bruce Springsteen - the T-shirt and jeans look for me is appealing. Prince was great as well. He designed all of his outfits himself and looked exactly how he wanted to look. He was in complete control of his image.
Tapping into a more masculine, macho culture, I got in touch with my femininity, but differently. Macho culture is also pride of the body and showing it off - a relationship to theatricality, to construction. It's about owning your narrative again.
The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.
I remember writing '5 Dollars' out of intense listening sessions of Bruce Springsteen. I don't know if it's obvious, but I was obsessed with how limpid Bruce Springsteen's melodies are: It's such a great way to do storytelling and to still be melodic and catchy.
Most people know Serge Gainsbourg's 'Histoire de Melody Nelson' album, but what's interesting is that in the early '90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don't really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it's the best.
I remember growing up and feeling all the time not pretty enough, too rude, too loud, taking too much space because precisely I wanted to maybe be bossy and loud and unapologetic and not really smooth all the time, and those were not really qualities that were valued for me.
I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.
Typically, in France, someone in my position should keep their mouth shut. I'm an entertainer, operating in the realm of pop, and it's often looked down upon for a pop artist to take a stand, to have convictions or opinions. But I don't think the two are incompatible or mutually exclusive.
There are lots of ways to be a feminist. Beyonce, for example, is a beautiful example of feminine sensuality and is still really powerful. My character and my inner essence is more like an awkward 15-year-old boy, like a teenager backstage, like, 'Yeah, what's up?' That's what I'm trying to channel.
The character I've created, Christine, is mainly the first attempt for me to escape all the secret injunctions we have as girls all the time. Like, be pretty but be polite. Don't take too much space. All those things that didn't mean anything to me. I just decided to turn them around with my character.
Grimes is the extreme version of doing everything yourself. I think this is impressive, because she is fiddling with things I couldn't fiddle with, all the technical stuff. I know what I want to do, but I wouldn't do it all my own, I would go crazy. This is insanely hard, to do an album by yourself. But I admire her for that.
I'm in love with artists that are really difficult to cover or to copy. You can only try to copy them, but you will never succeed because it's intertwined with really personal references and really personal ways to exist on stage. They are really strong individuals, and are writing their own songs and know where they want to go.
I have an obsession with haters: the great mess of the Internet expressing itself. I love to type my name on Twitter and read everything. It's always enlightening to see what they hate about you: I'm not pretty enough to be on stage, or my music doesn't make any sense. It feels good to read that, like I'm heading in the right direction!