“Choosing between the popular and the elegant, it’s absurd”, estimates Clara Luciani, who returns with the album “Heart”

There are obvious facts that jump out loud. Heart, Clara Luciani’s new album, available this Friday, is one of them. One listening is enough to promise him a great destiny: it will remain as one of the best records of the year (minimum). The artist, whom we met in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, remains cautious. We can feel his sincere anxiety at the idea that the public will not be there after the success of Holy Victory, first opus sold to hundreds of thousands of copies in four years.

Behind her mask, we also feel that she has been tested by these last months and the death of his grandfather consequences of the coronavirus. She did not experience the successive confinements well and repeatedly uses the term “confinement”. Chance of the calendar, Heart comes out the day after the curfew is eased, postponed from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Clara Luciani wants to see it as a sign. Her new songs, solar, dancing, will be able to accompany, she hopes and hopefully, tomorrow that sing.

In “Heart”, it is a lot about love. But no blissful love. You talk about a breakup (“Le Reste”), unilateral admiration (“The singer”), the couple where you can leave feathers (“Love always”) … Are you a frustrated romantic?

(She laughs) Quite upset. Like many human beings – I even wonder if it is not unique to man – I am very much in contradiction. You can hear it in my music. These are songs that are both very solar and very dark, nostalgic. They are deeper than their apparent lightness suggests. I myself can be extremely happy and then all of a sudden find myself in a huge crisis of doubt and in quite a sad period.

“Sainte Victoire” opened with “La Grenade”, a hymn of feminist empowerment that has become the hit we know. “Heart” is the first song on the album that bears his name. You talk about domestic violence. Was it important for you to start the disc by passing this message?

I think this song had to appear first because the rest of the album is quite self-centered, autobiographical in the lyrics. I wanted to start with this title which is for me the most important in his message. I wanted to lay the foundations from the start by saying: we’re going to dance, we’re going to party, but before that, even if we agree on the fact that there have been a lot of developments and a liberation of speech women between The grenade and now, there are already fifty women who have died under the blows of their husbands since the beginning of the year in France.

“J’sais pas plaire” on this new album seems to echo “Funny period” on the previous one. These are two self-portrait songs that you don’t spare yourself in. The success, the media and public opinion mostly positive towards you, have not changed anything?

It helped, but there are things that will follow me for the rest of my life. When you’re a mocked child, it’s very hard to forget. I have the impression of always being followed by this shadow. In the mirror, it is the injured little girl that I see the most, even though I know that there are things that have changed. It’s true that these songs have similarities. In their production as well. When I say something very intimate and sensitive, I need to do it in guitar / voice, because for me it is a kind of confidence, it is not something that I can chant like a political message. in the image of The grenade or Heart. I whisper half-word because it’s something I’m not proud of, which torments me.

We, singers, are expected to be beautiful and young forever. (…) We are not allowed to have white hair or wrinkles. By what right do they want to lock me in my twenties forever when I find it very beautiful to become an adult, to go towards something less green …

Wasn’t your success a form of revenge?

Yes, all the same, somewhere. I have the chance to make a second album, to answer interviews, people are interested in the record… So, obviously, I tell myself that I succeeded in that. But I believe that will never heal some wounds of the past. I built myself around that too. If one day I felt perfectly healed maybe the need to write songs would go away.

Recently a reporter criticized the physique of another artist of your generation, Hoshi. What does this mean to you?

It reminds me of nausea. This is something that I have discussed a lot directly with Hoshi. With Louane also more recently. When we chose this profession of singer, we did not sign for a modeling contract and we find ourselves in a spiral where we realize that we are expected to be beautiful and, even more horrible and impossible, to be young forever. I don’t think we ask the same of men. We are not allowed to have white hair or wrinkles. By what right do they want to lock me in my twenties forever when I find it very beautiful to become an adult, to go towards something less green …

Your song “The Singer” is about a young woman in love with a singer she idealizes. Couldn’t you have written the female version?

Yes, because we also fantasize about singers. We are locked into something glittery and glamorous when I am in a good position to say that it is something difficult to obtain and to save. It’s air. We don’t know why one day we like it and the next day not.

What did you mean by writing “Breathe Still”?

I wanted to talk about a woman who ends up freeing herself from a harmful relationship and who, little by little, recovers her rights over her own life and finds the desire to go out, drink, seduce, dance … As and when as I was writing it, and especially while working on the chorus, I realized that, without realizing it, I was writing a song about all of us and the current situation. We are not in a toxic relationship, we are locked up for other reasons and we are all waiting to regain our lives and our freedom.

This song seems to have everything to become one of the hits of the summer and accompany the French in their deconfinement …

I would like ! (laughs) I try to take this as a positive message. We are in a period where we have the impression that we are gaining in lightness, that we are regaining our freedoms. It’s a sun disk, dancing, maybe it would have arrived like a hair on the soup if we had been still completely locked up.

So the disco and funk orientation of most titles is a kind of reaction to successive confinements?

Yes, the songs already existed during the first lockdown, but their color and where I brought them, I decided when we were locked up. I was very anxious, I found it very painful and, to get out of bed, I listened to Abba, Elton John, songs that always attracted me but which were not necessarily songs that I listened to daily. I said to myself that if I had that need, maybe the French also wanted positive songs that make them want to get up in the morning.

At times, I thought of Michel Berger or Alain Chamfort, whether for melodic efficiency or a form of joyful melancholy. Are these influences?

Yes, absolutely, they are artists that I adore! And also, I’m a little fed up with the snobbery that the French have of spitting on variety. It’s almost a word we don’t want to hear about anymore. It annoys me because these are songs that rocked me, which I find immense. There is nothing wrong with having variety. On the contrary, I believe that, more than ever, I want to go towards something more popular. Problem is, in people’s minds – I’m sorry to insist on this (laughs) – you have to choose between the popular and the elegant. It’s absurd.

Is that why you seem perfectly at ease in a Jacques Demy universe, to which the “Reste” clip refers?

Yes, it is a universe that is at the same time musical, poetic, dreamlike and very easy to access. I like the idea of ​​something accessible. Inaccessibility, intellectuality for intellectuality, that does not make me dream. I like what is simple, simple pleasures.

In the last track of the album “Goodbye”, you sing, to the audience, “Tell me that you will not forget me”. Are you really afraid that he will forget you?

Yes. It is a fear that I have always had. The reception of my first record was so beautiful, so crazy, that I was not very happy when writing the second. I was afraid to disappoint.

“Sainte Victoire” took a year to please people. I had come to a point where I no longer believed it, when I told myself that it was not serious, that it would remain a first adventure that would not take more than that. It took a year for a song to hit the radio and convince.

Do you go through interviews, the enthusiastic feedback from journalists does not help you gain serenity?

Yes, but there are also plenty of albums that are loved by journalists and not by the public. Holy Victory took a year to please people. I had come to a point where I no longer believed it, when I told myself that it was not serious, that it would remain a first adventure that would not take more than that. It took a year for a song to hit the radio and convince.

You will find the public on tour this fall …

I look forward. I’m a little apprehensive too. For me, it’s really like finding a lover with whom I had an epistolary relationship (smile). I remain very connected to my audience through Instagram but we haven’t seen each other for a very long time. But it will be very beautiful. This will be… historic, this reunion.