RFI Musique - - French chanson - Alizée, the electro-chic return

Alizée, the electro-chic return

Fourth album

Paris

16/04/2010 -

After a two-year break from recording, following a less than successful third album, Alizée has come back with a slightly different style. The Corsican singer has called on the talents of the Paris electro scene for her new album Une Enfant du Siècle (a child of the century). It is a more sober affair, drenched in the sound of vintage synths. Some will say she’s gone down the hipster route, even if in this interview the former Lolita, now 25, protests that she’s merely “growing up” with her audience.

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RFI Musique: For this album, you decided to work with the label Institubes and the electro group Château Marmont. Why was that?
Alizée: Since the previous album, Psychédélices, I produce my own records and work with people whose ideas mesh well with mine. Three years ago, I had my single Fifty Sixty [written by Jean Fauque] mixed by David Rubato, one of the producers on the Institubes label. That’s how I met Jean-René Etienne, the boss of the label, with whom I worked on an idea of a different sort of album, more narrative inspired. At first it was going to be an EP, but I met up with the other producers, Tahiti Boy, Rob and Tacteel, and we ended up making an album.

This new direction is quite different from the popular variety style music you started out making…
That’s true, but Une enfant du siècle is still a pop album. The Alizée “brand” is popular and I don’t want to lose that. I found it more interesting to blend the two worlds, without having to change my voice. I wanted to break down that silly idea of the mainstream on one side and the elite trendy stuff on the other. A group like Château Marmont shouldn’t have to remain underground.

Is it a way for you to shine a light on these artists?
I think they should be more visible to the general public. As melodists, they’re not very far from the likes of Mylène Farmer, for example. What makes their work different from mainstream pop is in the production. And that’s a good thing. French pop is having a hard time coming up with fresh sounds, it seems to me. I hope that after this album, other mainstream artists will want to work with them.

The tone of the album is not so light, and a little more nostalgic than before. Are you worried you might alienate your fans?
Not really. I tell myself that my fans were fifteen years old like me at the beginning, and they too have got older. I met some fans in Paris recently. Three and a half hours doing a signing, during which people who have listened to my music for years and who had brought all my albums to be signed kept telling me that this new one was my best.

I don’t work with my old producers any more [Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat] because musically that style wasn’t what I wanted to sing, or what I myself was listening to any more. Today, I listen to my latest album on my iPod, in my car. It’s the first time I’ve done that in the ten years of my career.

Your album is released in France… and in Mexico. Why are you so successful there?
That dates back from before my third album. I put a video online in which I did a Madonna song. There was some buzz about it in Mexico, and I was contacted a little later by a local record company who wanted to release my third album in Mexico. I’m touring throughout Mexico at the end of the year. It’s quite a passionate relationship, between me and my Mexican fans.