It's still possible for a TV appearance to make a career. A few weeks ago, Christine and the Queens appeared on BBC's Later . . . with Jools Holland. It probably wouldn't be accurate to say that Héloïse Letissier's life changed overnight, but that giddy, eye-catching appearance was a tipping point in every respect.
It means a new run and re-evaluation for the French artist's 2014 debut album Chaleur Humaine, which has recently received a full international release. Full of bright, dynamic, infectious, occasionally wonky and often tender pop songs, the album is the mark of a performer finding her feet and her sound.
Before Christine and the Queens came along, Letissier was studying drama in Lyon. A 2010 encounter with a troupe of drag queens in a club called Madame JoJo’s in London’s Soho turned her head.
"I was fascinated by drag before," Letissier explains, "but I'd never gone to clubs and only saw drag shows on YouTube or RuPaul's Drag Race and things like that. When I arrived in London, I bought Time Out and searched for queer evenings and drag shows because I wanted to see what they were like, and that's how I met the queens."
These drag artists befriended and encouraged her and their influence lives on in the name of her act. When they said their goodbyes and Letissier returned home, neither party expected anything to happen.
“When I went back to France, I said to them that I was going to make some music and they were like, ‘okay, do your thing’. I don’t think they expected me to do anything special, I don’t think they expected me to become a singer and tour and do TV shows. I certainly didn’t expect it.
Gender sender
“We’ve kept in touch and we write to each other, but we’ve never seen each other again. I was back in London to work on the album so I could have seen them again, but I guess I never really wanted to because it was such a weird and romantic and extravagant part of my life – and it was such an important moment that I wanted to keep it magical.”
For Letissier, Christine is an alter-ego.
“Christine is the exact same process as having a drag persona. I’m not wearing drag, but I have the same idea of turning every scar into jewels or taking shame and turning it into something glorious or turning pain into power. It’s what I love about the drag scene and how the performers are inspired by their experiences to create something you can laugh with or play with or cry with.
“I want to be neutral, I don’t want to have any gender when I’m Christine because it’s more of an energy. I really want to be considered as a voice and not a female singer.”
It was clear to Letissier that pop music offered more opportunities to do this than the drama path she had been on. “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. People don’t go to theatres anymore.
“But you find theatre and the emotions of theatre everywhere. The emotions I wanted to convey could be translated into videos and they can be played everywhere by everyone. Music is more mainstream, but in a good way.”
Héloïse of Troy
Pop music would also give Letissier a voice to talk about the stuff she wanted to talk about.
“I’m obsessed with the pop ethic and what you can do with it. I wanted to be a Trojan horse from the beginning and was interested in using this commercial and accessible form and twisting it to talk about all the ways of being a woman, gender and other issues.”
Pop also meant she could flex her performance muscles.
“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. When I started to work with dancers, it changed a lot for me. I’m good at improvisation – I’m really good when I stop thinking and let myself go – but now, I watch my dancers and learn from them. They all have strong personalities and they’ve opened many doors for me to understand that dance is a language.”
Letissier talks a lot about instinct when it comes to Christine.
“Normally, I’m a control freak and I want to plan everything, but in terms of performance, instinct is really, really good for me. Christine is a character, she has the suit, she has this idea of being free, she likes minimalistic settings and strong colours. When I’ve the right setting, I let go and instinct does the rest.
“Danger is always the solution. Every time it’s not safe, it’s working. Christine and the Queens is about not being safe. When I take risks, I win. When I do the safe thing, it’s a disaster.”
The more Christine performs, the more she feels her body has changed.
“I have become more of an athlete. At the beginning, I was dancing, but it was raw. I was singing, but it was raw. It was lo-fi and natural. Then I learned I had to practice and treat it as work because of touring. You realise the stage is a performance and you have to work like an athlete if you want to dance and sing at the same time.
“I’d work out and see my body change. I saw my muscles getting stronger, which means I can move more and go further if I keep working. I became obsessed with improving and pushing the limits and becoming a better singer, a stronger performer.
“But I have to keep in mind what drew me to singing and performing in the first place was a will to free myself. I have to remember this.”
Queens’ English
Christine’s shape-shifting also applies to language, with the singer moving from French to English lyrics. “It’s like picking up two different instruments. English is more naive and direct and I haven’t mastered it completely, and this makes it more interesting when I write in English because I find weird ways of expressing myself and telling a story.
“With French, I have every possible tool at my disposal and that’s completely different. I’m writing new songs now and I’m playing with Spanish lyrics, even though I haven’t mastered the language fully. The voices don’t sound the same either because it’s a different way of articulating, which is intriguing to me.
“Moving between languages is really shape-shifting and I can properly transform myself.”
Boys, girls and aliens: Christine’s role-play models
“When I was young, people like David Bowie, Prince and Michael Jackson were gender-bending characters, but it was not conceptualised as such. Prince is totally gender-bending to me. Even the really macho gestures of Michael Jackson felt like theatre to me and it was like a performance. It was something we felt with them, but which we did not talk about.
“I loved them because they were these amazing self-creations. They just created and recreated themselves and they could do anything with their bodies.
“It’s what I loved about Björk, she was like an alien in a way.
“Now, people vocalise things more and take positions more and they’re more open about things. Gender has really become a topic and people are quite vocal about it. I’m talking a lot more about what it means for me to escape gender and why I do that. It was always there in pop music, but it wasn’t talked about. But thank God it was there. As a queer child, I was happy to have Bowie and Prince around.”
Chaleur Humaine is out now on Because. Christine and The Queens play the Longitude festival in July
