Technikart Interview

[Bamagirl]

In this interview, for Technikart, Alizée speaks of the separation from Mylène Farmer, and how she felt she was a product. She speaks of the male singer who released a single of Moi Lolita and commented Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat must've made a lot more money.
She aldo talks about the commercial she did in Japan: "To release an album there, you have to do certain things, like associating the music to something else, so I did a TV commercial there for some Japanese cookies along with the song. That's how the song got big there, and people started listening to it in the streets of Tokyo."


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TECHNIKART

The summer of 2000, she entered into our homes. In winter 2010, she's entering into us.

Alizée: Like aHurricane
Ten years ago was the Alizée tornado; more than two million "Moi... Lolita"s flew off the shelves of French supermarkets. The sizzling pop star is coming back with an album that'll set the trend for the 2010s: a creative and charming return to the mainstream.

It's cliché but true: unlike all the little hyped phonies, Alizée, a working-class artist, isn't the least bit snobby. We spent an entire afternoon photo shoot with her. The pop star turned out to be the nicest person in the room. Like an old classmate from our Jean Moulin high school; neither a prissy left-bank hip chick, nor a slutty showoff, Alizée symbolizes a current trend that gets talked about less and less in the media (which is too occupied with selling trash). Forced to tour Mexico with bodyguards, she gets hounded by paparazzi in France, has sold millions of records, but arrives ready to go and early for our meeting the following day,having just dropped off her daughter at a pre-school in the middle-class 13th arrondissement of Paris.

On paper, we weren't exactly fascinated with her new project, her fourth album, Une Enfant du siècle. A mainstream singer hiring a bunch of well-connected producers isn't that suprising anymore, but it could have been a slick move; she's buying credibility for cheap, and the clever little composers are plowing the postmodern terrain on a theme currently in vogue: the icons of Andy Warhol's Factory. Listening to the album brought smiles to our faces. Well, it doesn't have that bohemian or folk Habitat sound. The two parts are nicely harmonized. Chateau Marmont, Rob, and David Rubato, big-time composers and top-flight producers, carved out songs that are both modern and vintage, à la Kim Wilde or Valerie Dore; in other words, delicious, fresh, catchy, melancholic, spontaneous--sparkly on the outside, subtle on the inside. These days only Lily Allen, with her more beat-up look, sings similar-sounding jingles that are, paradoxically, more engaging rather than quickly forgotten. It's mainstream, as necessitated by Alizée's celebrity status. More than anything, though, it's pop.

It's snowing outside and it's freezing inside. Alizée's wrapped in her overcoat, but through this musical blind test, she turns out to be both easygoing and outgoing at the same time.

Madonna, "La Isla Bonita"
"I had the album cover of Like a Virgin in my room! My dad was a fan, and I grew up with her songs. I've liked her less since the Music album; she continues to work with the latest sound styles, which is great, but she's less authentic, and her sexy look is a little worn-out. I sang "La Isla Bonita" on a Madonna TV special on France 2, six years ago. I have a very active fan base on the Internet, and my performance was put on YouTube, and there were two million views, including from people in Mexico who went completely crazy over it. That's how I became a star in Mexico. My version of "La Isla Bonita" became number one on Mexican radio, and I performed in a huge stadium there. They have a more spontaneous entertainment culture, and I love to go there, but I need bodyguards with me."

Teki Latex & Lio, "Les Matins de Paris"
"Teki Latex, from the band Institubes. We were looking for remixers for the singles from my previous album, Psychédélices, and David Rubato sent me a version of "Fifty Sixty" that I just loved. So I met the manager of David's label, Jean-René Etienne. He told me that he could find composers for me for my next album. I listened to some samples from Chateau Marmont and Rob, and I was captivated. I'm not huge on electronica, but these musicians proposed some samples that I just loved. As for Lio, I like "Banana Split" and "Les brunes comptent pas pour des prunes." She's had a good career. Popular yet strong-willed. I don't know what I'll be like at her age. I'm a singer, so it'll depend on who I work with in the future."

Mylène Farmer, "Libertine"
"I owe her a lot, of course. It was a real opportunity to meet the two of them, her and Laurent Boutonnat. She was a well-known, established singer, who took me under my wing when I was 15, when they noticed me on M6, on the TV show Graines de star. She protected me a lot, until I separated from her when I was 19. Thanks to her, I've been able to experience some really incredible things and sell a lot of records. I learned a lot, artistically speaking, as well as in business matters--I'm now a producer on my albums. I didn't feel manipulated by the songs she wrote for me; I was 15, I liked the songs, the clothes I wore were fine... When I realized the double entendres in the songs, it didn't bother me, because the lyrics were very well-written. In the end, though, I did get the impression that I was a product, and so I started suggesting things that were more personal and less sexy, and that's where our differences began. We separated, however, on good terms."

Vanessa Paradis, "Joe Le Taxi"
"When you love pop music, you dream of a career like hers. She began even younger than me. Before "Moi... Lolita" exploded on the scene, I was warned: Vanessa got taken advantage of because of her young success. She had to clean up the mess, but I've been lucky that things have gone well for me. I didn't have a normal adolescence, but at least I had one. Despite my success, I still lived in Ajaccio. When I had to go to Paris, my mother came with me. I took classes by correspondence. But when I reached #1 in 22 countries with my first album, I had to stop my studies, while I was in 11th grade. You can still learn culture on your own, and in any case, even with a diploma, people still aren't finding jobs these days."

Julien Doré, "Moi... Lolita"
"A musician from La Nouvelle Star sent me a message one afternoon to tell me that he was going to do a remake of the song on the prime-time show that evening. When I watched him on TV, I didn't think he was making fun of me at all. I don't know if he was making fun, and I don't really care. I'm not a fan, and a lot of people thought he massacred the song. It got talked about a lot, and Mylène and Laurent must have made a lot more money. I sold two and half million copies of that single, the 29th-best selling French single of all time. I didn't touch any of that money until I turned 18. I even got to #9 in England and I did the Top of the Pops! In Japan, it was "J'en ai marre" that made the top of the charts. To release an album there, you have to do certain things, like associating the music to something else, so I did a TV commercial there for some Japanese cookies along with the song. That's how the song got big there, and people started listening to it in the streets of Tokyo."

Mika, "Relax (Take It Easy)"
"I sang this song at Les Enfoirés, with Christophe Maé, Patrick Fiori and Nolwenn Leroy. Les Enfoirés is very exclusive. I did it in 2001, when I was 16, and have done it four times since then. It's the exclusive club of French showbiz and French variété. A big change from Institubes. I want to make this big change, even though in France it can be complicated. Still, it's good to be interested in a bit of everything."

Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"
"When I was little, I was sung to sleep by the Beatles, Aznavour, Joe Dassin, Simon & Garfunkel, but not Dylan. New folk, Carla Bruni? No. I listen to it, I mean, I bought Charlotte Gainsbourg, but I've done 15 years of dance, and I prefer music that really moves. I'm not so much into the bohemian culture. It moves a lot of people, but it's very French, very Parisian, and my culture is more pop, I'm from a more middle-class, provincial background. I lived in Corsica until I was 18. Dylan talks about Edie Sedgwick? Jean Fauque's the one who talked to me about her."

Bashung, "La nuit je mens"
"Here's one written by Jean Fauque. He wrote "Fifty Sixty" for me, inspired by the New Yorkers like Sedgwick, or Maripol, her stylist sister who rubbed shoulders with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Blondie, and also Madonna at the time. I met Maripol through Mylène, and she gave me some bracelets that Madonna used to wear. I then met Jean Fauque. It wasn't until much later that I learned that they were brother and sister! They came to dinner one evening at my place, where Jean told us some of his anecdotes, and I understood that "Fifty Sixty" was about these people from New York City. I liked the theme and the lyrics, so we said, why not make an album around Edie Sedgwick, from the Warholian universe? I'm not at all like them, with the drugs and everything, but it's still fascinating, not for their way of living, but for the excitement of that group of people and of New York City."

Taxi Girl, "Cherchez le garçon"
"This is one of the sounds that I love. Mirwais had worked with Madonna, and Daniel Darc worked with me. I met him at the Plan, the concert hall in Ris-Orangis (a suburb of Paris). I went to his concert because I liked his album Crèvecoeur, and I asked him to participate in the Psychédélices album with Fauque and Burgalat. So he wrote two songs for me, really dark ones, completely different from my own universe..."

Kim Wilde, "Cambodia"
"A big hit from before I was born. I don't think she had many hits? After the success of "Moi... Lolita," I was very afraid of disappearing from the music scene. I put my confidence in Mylène and Laurent, that they would write other hits for me, but when I left them, I was really worried; like Nena (whose song "99 Red Balloons" I sang in Mexico, by the way), being a one-hit wonder. So I'm trying to not do songs that are too complicated, but at the same time being ambitious artistically. Psychédélices was a disque d'or in France, but people had written it off as a failure. I was fortunate to be able to count on the Mexican music market, which was huge. I did a TV scene in a soap opera there, which was seen by 75 million people!

Lorie, "Play"
"when you make music for children, it's hard to disassociate yourself from that. I waited until 2003 to do my first real concerts, seven shows in a row at the Olympia. I didn't really know what my audience would look like, and I was even afraid that it would mainly be kids. But it was a very diverse crowd: kids, parents, gays, young people my age, 18-year-olds, everyone. My fans have grown up with me, whereas with Lorie, it's still pretty much young kids. I did see that she wanted to change, and that she's done some sexy photo shoots.

Chateau Marmont, "Diane"
Rob, "King Lover"
"I'm very glad to have escaped from the whole 90s showbiz scene with them, and the relationship I have with them is just great; it's a very human relationship. On "Coeur fendre," Chateau Marmont proposed several versions to me; some sounded very Nintendo-like, others sounded like Moroder. They have a large palette of music, and a very recognizable sound that I love. Like Rob, they are very good with melody, which is so important--that's what I love, and that's what the public gets hooked on. I don't understand why they don't sell very many records. Surely it's because they were slapped with a trendy label and not a bohemian one. It used to be, "the fewer records I sell, the more respect I'll get", so they got slapped with that label, when all they really wanted was to sell records, which they really deserved. I hope that with my album, people will get more interested in them. I'm proud that they are using me to reach a wider audience. As for me, I worked with them not to be trendier, but for the quality of their sounds and their melodies. If I become more trendy, that's fine, but I don't want to give up my mainstream status!"

Jeanette, "Porque te vas"
"One of Rob's favorite songs. He wrote "La candida" for me with this one in mind. I like to sing in Spanish, so if my Mexican fans like it..."

"Lily Allen, " It's Not Me, It's You" album
"I was still listening to the album in the car on the way here! The sound could be a little better, but the songs are really good. Listening to her songs, I said to myself that that's something I could sing now; I see lots of things in common with my own tastes. And she's gotten a lot of exposure now, so it's a good comparison--even if she has a trashy side that I don't have, maybe because she's English. I've never taken drugs, I don't drink, I don't smoke, and at first, they wanted pass me off as a naughty girl, but no, I'm too modest for that. I don't know how these trashy people do it. That wasn't in my upbringing. Maybe it's holding back my image for now, but not for the long-term. I want to be here long-term."

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