Coralie Clément interview

Today, I interviewed Coralie Clément. The guardian angel of this blog, the one who wrote a blog post for us all a few years back (this one), the singer who stands for everything this blog is about: the love for French songs, sung by husky beautiful girls.
You can understand my excitement.

The interview will run in a few months in a Dutch magazine, but I can give you the highlights. Yes, La belle affaire is mostly about a girl and a boy breaking up. But it’s not about her own divorce from Marc Chouarain, father of daughter Iris and collaborator on ‘La belle affaire’. Coralie says that the theme and the stories of the song are more universal.
She told me she loves Françoise Hardy, that she recorderd her cover of ‘Mon amie la rose’ for a german ad and decided to keep the song for her album. Jane Birkin, Vanessa Paradis, Gainsbourg and Depeche Mode are among her favorites as well. ‘I’m in love with (Depeche Mode-singer) Dave Gahan’, she said, in that ultra-lovely French accent of her (see this interview to hear how CC speaks in English).
Just like on her second album, big sister Gaëlle plays the flute on this album, you can hear her on the closing track Tes nuits pâles. We didn’t talk that much about Benjamin.
She said she loves the movies, loves Sofia Coppola and thinks Lost in Translation is a masterpiece. The loneliness of the ScarJo character in that movie is very appealing to Coralie. ‘I can very much relate to that, in the sense that I love travelling, love being on tour, love to immerse myself in other countries and cultures. But on the other hand, it’s not your home, it’s not your culture, you feel overwhelmed and left out.’
We talked a little about Iris, her daughter. She told me she made the children’s book Iris à 3 ans (with Gesa Hansen) because when she saw her little girl listen to the Vengeance-album by Benjamin, that she reacted very shocked to the swearing in various songs. ‘So I decided to make a book that I could read to her that was more suitable for her young ears’, she laughed. Oh my.
She might come to the low countries next year, March or April, so let’s light a candle for that to happen, ’cause now that I’ve spoken to her, I’d give my left index finger to see her play live.

Blast from the past: