Jain has put away the Peter Pan collars and the blue jumpsuit, the signature outfits of her first two albums, of which she has sold a total of more than 1.2 million copies. She has in mind “a new costume that will tell a new story” for her next scenes, but it is with another concept that she returns this Friday. His third album, The Foolassociates each of the eleven songs with a card from the Tarot de Marseille.
“My mother has been drawing cards for me since I was little, it has always been part of my life, of my culture, she explains to 20 minutes. I find it very poetic. The Moon card, for example, corresponds to nostalgia, that of the Sun, to fulfillment. “It is that of the Fool (“The Fool”) that she chose as the title of the opus to encompass all the new songs. For what ? “Because it’s the only Tarot de Marseille card that doesn’t have a number. It can be the first or the last. It is also the title of the first song on the album. I thought it was quite nice to start with this card. Symbolically, it announces the new beginning, risk-taking. That’s what I envisioned: making a real new artistic proposal. »
“I wanted to go more towards the music I listen to”
The author, composer and performer, who turned 30 last year, carried out a work of introspection by taking a break in 2019. She asked herself “lots of questions” about the artist she wanted to be. She concluded that she wanted to be part of those who surprise the public and do not lock themselves into a style.
“There are big differences between The Fool And Zanakamy first album [sorti en 2015] whose songs I wrote when I was 16. It was imbued with Pointe-Noire, the Congo. Today, I am no longer the same age and it has been a very long time since I went back there. I couldn’t see myself reusing the same influences because, as an adult, it didn’t really correspond to me personally. There I wanted to go more towards the music that I listen to. »
In recent years, and especially during confinement, she has rushed to vinyl records from the 1970s, those of Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush in the lead. From the latter, she listened “on a loop” The Kick Inside who greatly influenced her The Fool. “I didn’t deliberately go for that style. He came to me,” says Jain, who wrote most of his new songs in a converted fisherman’s cabin in Marseille.
“Not a vintage album”
The “completely autobiographical” texts are therefore “more intimate than his precedents”. They talk about love in a more personal way. Does she consider maria like a coming out song? “I associate it with a love song as there are plenty of them,” she replies, laconic.
After working alone on her models, she joined Maxim Nucci in the studio, with whom she had already collaborated on her previous records. “We modernized the whole thing with sounds so that it’s not a vintage album”, underlines the artist. Effectively, if The Fool takes us back to the decade of incense, psychedelia, folk and even italo-disco, it is contemporary and even timeless. The fans who vibrated with Zanaka And souldierreleased in 2017, may be confused by this change of direction.
But the last time Jain’s mother pulled the cards for her, she was reassuring: “She told me I was going to be very happy and that I was going to find my audience. I take that as a positive sign. »