Three years ago, she told in verses and refrains how, behind the counter of the bar where she worked, she dreamed of glory and Olympia. The title of the song in question, Susanis also her pseudonym, a “blaze”, as she puts it, “stung at [son] great grandmother “. His wishes were granted. The most scheduled artist in festivals, she received the Victory of Stage Revelation in 2020. Her first album, You you, was a public and critical success. Then, last month, she do her first Olympia and a new one is already scheduled for May 10, 2023. The author, composer and performer is entering a new stage this Friday by delivering her second album, cameo. It opens on Oceane – her first name in the civil status – a piece where she tells the vertigo of success and the questions inspired by her notoriety. “I wonder what my place is and I am still looking, she confides to 20 minutes. To write this record, I had to go back to basics, to the basics, and be careful not to lose myself in Suzane, in what is expected of me. For that, I had to reveal myself a little more. »
Three years ago, you were discovered with your bob cut and jumpsuit that seemed to be your signature look. You abandoned them. Is it a way of “killing” the character Suzane?
A little yes. I am in a constant quest for freedom. At the time, my square and my jumpsuit were my way of being free. I don’t think I thought about “killing” Suzane, but there may be a bit of that because I want to avoid getting lost in it. In recent years, I have received a lot of love from the public. The gaze of others is a sacred mirror. Even if, for me, Suzane and Océane are the same person, I didn’t want only Suzane to take the applause, who does things well, who dares… Océane is the little provincial to whom we said “You won’t do that, it’s too complicated, there’s someone better than you” and I don’t want to tell myself that Océane is less good,
In the song Oceaneyou say you have the impression of being in the Truman Show. That is to say that what you are experiencing seems unreal to you?
At the beginning, it was fun because I realized my dreams, discovering the unknown stimulated me. And then, ultimately, it’s an industry I got into. When you are an artist, there is a false set, moments when everything is very intense, when you go on stage, for example, while ten minutes later, you are alone in the hotel, far from our loved ones. Suzane, Océane… I didn’t want to go against myself by telling myself that people were expecting me to be the girl in a jumpsuit, with a very marked look. In fact, I am able to make a character and kill it the next album.
But Susanwould you still sing it on stage?
Sure ! I still sing it today. It makes complete sense. I started my Olympia with her and ended it with Oceane. It was obvious to me. I strongly believe in the signs of fate. I tell myself that if this concert has been postponed five times – which is not nothing – it was because Océane had to see the light of day for me to sing it. The people who listen to me and follow me were amazed and touched that I got naked to this point, me who was in control until then. They got slack in the head. I think it spoke to them.
In At homeyou talk about your life with your loved ones, when you go back to your parents and you regret seeing all these photos in which you do not appear…
I realized that my loved ones support me a lot and follow my life but that I am perhaps less part of theirs. My mother tells me that since I’ve been doing this job, she has the feeling that she no longer has me just for herself, that she shares me with other people. When I come home and see moments I didn’t experience in photos, I’m the first to think that maybe I’m missing things. I feel like I have a double life. Again this story of Suzane/Océane…
Melodically, the titles of cameohave very swaying rhythms, less electro than those of You you. Was there a desire to evolve on that side as well?
I wandered on this album between pop, French song, more urban sounds. To continue to assert myself in my music, I had to continue to search, to make incursions into places where I wanted to go without having dared to do so until then. On the first album, there were very few harmonies, I often started from the text and I did the music afterwards. There, I tested new things, melodies came to me before the texts. I wanted to use my voice in all its nuances, in head voices, in a fuller voice, in a more rap or slam flow, depending on the message I want to convey. In music, it was the same. It all started with an intention, an emotion, a color, a desire. I’ve always wanted to explore what I like the most: French song, with Piaf, Brel, Barbara, Balavoine… In the end, I tried to make a fusion, a Suzane DNA that wanders among all these styles between dancing songs, swaying rhythms and kicks very straight. I liked going on that trip and continuing to assert myself by searching, without locking myself into a ready-made recipe.
Your texts are teeming with references to pop culture. A poster of the Spice Girls, titanic rented from Vidéo Futur, the magazine StarCluba record from Indochina… Are these your pop culture comforters?
It’s a kind of mood board [tableau d’humeur] of my universe. I come from pop culture, from a working class background. I was born into a middle class family. My father was a nurse, my mother is an executive at the CAF du Vaucluse. They always counted their salaries so that we didn’t miss anything. When I said that I had to go back to basics, I needed to mention the things that made me, the atmosphere in which I grew up. That is to say in this house, in the South, where it speaks very loudly. We watch TV, Nagui… titanic, which I saw with my grandmother, it was the first film that made me cry at the cinema. I had Zizou’s poster in 98… As a teenager, I listened to Gala or Diam’s and Vitaa in my bedroom. All that is a library of memories that make me this singer today. Sometimes I blamed my parents for not taking me to the museum enough. I always believed that this pop culture they left me was not good enough. But the reality is that I was born into this kind of family, with this kind of culture, and I’m proud of it.
This album emanates a great feeling of nostalgia. Can we be nostalgic at your age, at 31?
I think we experience our first nostalgia at 30. I had never felt it before. I think my fear of passing time is reflected in my album. I see my girlfriends having children, seeing them grow up I tell myself that I am getting old. In your thirties, you enter adult life, you are no longer in an in-between. Everything is getting too serious. This is something that scares me a bit. I don’t think I’ve found my place yet.
One of your song, Disenchanted Generationwhich talks about the state of mind of millennialsis an explicit reference to Mylène Farmer’s tube…
For me, Disenchanted still resonates strongly today. It came out in 1991, I was a year old. My parents listened to Mylène Farmer a lot. Disenchanted has always accompanied me in times when I felt completely helpless in the face of the world. There are very few songs like this that follow us when we feel like we’re living in black-mirror, of not knowing what to do, how to protect yourself, how to move forward. I believe that I am not the only one to ask myself these questions in my generation. It was obvious to me to extend the message of Mylène Farmer, in this context, in my time. Thirty years later, I say that the chaos is still there, but that we have hope. I still believe in it, I think it’s going to be okay. I would not have written this text if I had not had this hope. I think songs can bring people together. It is not they who change the world, but the people who listen to them, yes, perhaps.
As you did with homosexuality or climate change on You you, you continue to talk about social issues on this new album, in particular immigration or violence against women. Is it important for you to speak out on these themes?
These are everyday matters. Unfortunately, we hear, several times a day, of femicides – it’s a word that has become commonplace, it’s not even shocking to know that a woman is dead, often under the blows of her husband. Domestic violence, I experienced it through my prosecutor’s office, when I arrived in Paris. In the apartment below, I heard knocks, deaf, it froze me, the cries were quickly stifled. I called the cops five times during this period, nothing happened, even though they were moving. One day, my neighbor came out of her house bleeding, her husband was running after her, saying “She’s crazy! the people on the landing were panicked. When I moved out, she was still living there. During confinement, I thought of her again. In my head, I felt like I had left her locked away. I had to write this song, to express myself on it, to remember that a woman’s life is taken away because she is a woman. I think that many people like me who have witnessed domestic violence have not had all the tools to react, to help. That there are so many omertas and disinterest around it seems crazy to me.