In the music video for Christine and the Queens’ song “5 Dollars”,
Héloïse Letissier hypnotically rolls the muscles in her spine, applies
face cream with a slap, and ponders her outfit for the day. She settles
on an intimidating leather harness, strapped over her tiny chest
and hidden behind a boxy suit. She leaves the room, and we’re left
wondering what – or maybe who – she’s about to conquer. She has
transformed once again.
Héloïse grew up a wildly shy kid. Her parents – Mum a French
and Latin teacher and Dad a professor of Victorian-era literature
- encouraged her to live an internal life in the company of book
characters. Following a break-up and spiral into depression in her
early 20s, she wandered into a London drag club. What happened next
has become the folkloric origin story of France’s most exciting popstar:
a band of drag queens plucked the heartbroken 22-year-old waif out of
the crowd and instructed her not to care about other people’s opinions
of her. That was the day, she says, that her life truly began.
Héloïse called this new confident, wise iteration of herself
‘Christine’ and, in tribute to the performers who ripped the ennui
right out of her, pluralised her stage name. Christine and the
Queens was born. “When Christine arrived in my life, it was more
of a survival technique than a character for me,” Héloïse explains.
“I allowed myself to be empowered for the first time. I put a name
on it. Christine is a way I can be extremely fragile and extremely
strong, but it’s very much always me.”
Her first record, Chaleur Humaine (‘human warmth’), was released
in both her native French and English, and has sold more than two
million copies since 2014. It made her one of the biggest popstars in
France, a country where her beliefs and identity often clashed with
the way the music press wanted to handle pop artists. Héloïse is a
pansexual woman who was not only inspired to make music with the
encouragement of drag queens, but who boldly explores the trappings
of gender and femininity in her lyrics and performance.“In France, there’s a culture where queerness – and even feminism – is
really hard to explain with nuance.” Often, she’ll be met with demands to
explain the intricacies of gender identity and not asked a single question
about her music. It’s an exhausting task. “I’m glad if I can educate, but
at some point I felt like I was doing a job I didn’t have to do.”Four years since her debut, Christine and the Queens is releasing
Chris, an album about “hungry, horny women” – a vaguely taboo
idea that Héloïse is experimenting with through her presentation as
a square-jawed hunk. In videos and live performances, she’s like a
gang leader who’s never seen a gang outside of Michael Jackson
videos and the finger-snapping Sharks and Jets of West Side Story.
It’s all choreographed machismo, reminding us how much of gender
is rooted in the performance of confidence and arbitrary visual
markers like hair-length.“By exploring that, I actually got in touch with my femininity; I was
showing more of my body as a woman, but with a set of clothes that
made it macho. I like how easy it is to subvert gender. It can be just
a tiny detail or a way to behave that’s unexpected.”Emboldened by gender chameleons like Michael Jackson and
David Bowie, Héloïse examines these ideas through the lens of pop.
“I love working in a format that can be really popular. Because of
who I am, what I have to say and how I identify, I’m more like an
outsider.” But, given its accessibility, pop music can be the ultimate
Trojan Horse: a vehicle for big ideas and scary human truths, hidden
inside something unexpected. Like a harness worn beneath a
double-breasted suit jacket.second life
MEET FRENCH POP ICON
CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS.
Wor d s Brodie Lancaster
music talks