Four years after his last album Disobedience, Mylène Farmer unveiled this Friday on music platforms her new title, composed and produced by her friend Woodkid. Entitled For ever, the first extract from the singer’s twelfth album, on which Woodkid worked alongside Moby, Archive and AaRO, tackles, on a heady rhythm, a painful and vengeful breakup. “It’s going extremely well. We can’t talk about it, because I imagine you know the secret that surrounds this project, but it is an absolutely wonderful project. She’s great ! It’s an honor for me,” Woodkid commented on Radio Canada on July 5. Portrait of the artist from Lyon, of Polish origin, with multiple internationally recognized glasses and caps, who fits so well into the world of Mylène Farmer!
A child “fascinated by things visual and sound”
Born on March 16, 1983, Yoann Lemoine, known as Woodkid, was born in Tassin-la-Demi-Lune (Rhône) and grew up around Lyon, near Villefranche-sur-Saône. “I was born to a French father and a Polish mother. My childhood was marked by summer trips to Poland, just after the fall of the Wall”, he explains to Inrocks. Eastern European imagery is an influence he still claims in his work today.
And to continue: “I have always been fascinated by visual and sound things. As a child, I spent hours analyzing the shadows cast, understanding how it worked. I tried to put my eyes at the height of a glass to cancel the perspective. »
His father, an advertiser, gave him a Macintosh when he was a teenager: “I learned Photoshop and started making digital images,” he told The Obs in 2020. He was introduced to applied arts at the Emile-Cohl school in Lyon where he obtained his designer designer diploma with honors. He then moved to Great Britain to study screen printing at the University of Swindon.
A “lucky” music video director
He moved to Paris in 2004 and cut his teeth working on the film Arthur and the Invisibles for Luc Besson and understands that he cannot be “employed under someone’s orders. He made a series of sketches for Sofia Coppola for the film Marie Antoinette in 2006. “Drawing frustrated me with its lack of movement, so I started making films,” he explains to Release in 2013.
In 2007, he directed his first music video, ever green for Axelle Renoir. “I first made music videos for friends, then for Yelle, and then word of mouth worked: Moby, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Drake, Lana del Rey”, sums up -he.
We owe him in particular the clips of This game for Yelle, Should we, should we not? for Nolween Leroy, Mistake for Moby, Born to Die and Blue Jeans by Lana Del Rey Take Care for Drake and Rihanna or or Teenage Dream for Katy Perry.
On the fact that artists from all over the world are snatching his talent, he declares: “The first time, I didn’t understand. When Katy Perry’s email arrived in my inbox, I thought it was a joke. Then when I understood that she really wanted me, I felt lucky and also hyperpaumé “, he is still surprised in the columns of Release.
Woodkid, “an old thing that I thought was cool”
“As in parallel, I was trained as a musician, I started to inject music into my videos. Then in 2008, I met Pierre Le Ny, manager of the independent label GUM, who signed me”, he launched the Woodkid project.
“It’s a name that connotes childhood (kid, child), and something organic (wood, le bois). If I want to make very metallic and very adult music, it becomes a bit more complicated. It’s an old thing that I found cool and that I would change very gladly if I could today, “he explains to our colleagues from the Progress.
An exposure to “sudden fame”
His first single, released in 2011, Irona success seen more than 20 million on YouTube, is included in the trailer of the video game Assassin’s Creed Revelationsby Dior Homme for the men’s fall-winter 2013 collection show and by Volvic for its 2015 advertising campaign.
“Meeting Lana del Rey was founding. In 2011, his first single, Video Games came out at the same time as mine, Iron, and we were both exposed to stardom in sudden ways. We share the same musical values: we try to produce beautiful, serious songs that go beyond the summer hit,” he told Release.
A gay artist in search of “meaning”
In 2013, he released his first album, titled The Golden Agesold some 800,000 copies.
Meanwhile, Woodkid has been able to manage, or generate, the expectation by distilling two other clips, Run Boy Runsong taken from the film’s soundtrack My life with John F. Donovan by Xavier Dolan, and I Love You. “I’m gay and it’s important for me to find meaning in it, especially in my music,” he told The Obs. The piece I love you is for a boy, that’s self-explanatory. It’s true that I’ve been credited with affairs – with Lana Del Rey, for example – but I’ve never claimed to be with girls. If there’s one thing I’ve never lied about, it’s that one, “said the man who signed the 2010 campaign against AIDS for Aides, Graffiti, seen by more than ten million people. times on YouTube.
“In my first album, I wanted to highlight everything I could have suffered, what we try to impose on boys as strengths: religion, military imagery, and to bring out childhood who goes into rebellion with that… Being homosexual is the rejection of a certain idea of the world, of refusing this model, the desire to build one’s identity as one wishes, to do one’s shopping in identity, in the masculine and the feminine, not meeting a standard”, he further explains.
He confides: “It’s a very intrusive project, very heavy to manage emotionally. I had to refuse very tempting offers, I said no to Madonna and the Rolling Stones. Not out of snobbery, but to devote myself entirely to the album. »
In 2013, however, he also signs the artistic direction of the new album of the American artist John Legend, produced by Kanye Wes and that of the clip Happy by Pharrell Williams as well as the American artist’s concert at Coachella.
A “liberating” dark spirit
In 2014, he released a farewell track titled Do You Love Me After All and announces that he now wishes to devote himself to cinema. A year later, he signed a duet with the Swedish singer Lykke Li, never let you downfor the soundtrack of the film Divergent 2: The Uprising. In 2015, the artist JR Ellis enlists his services for a single titled volcano and Woodkid collaborates with Rihanna on her album Anti. In 2016, he composed the soundtrack for the feature film Desierto by Jonás Cuarón and began his collaboration with Nicolas Ghesquière with whom he did around ten fashion shows. The same year, he met the experimental pianist Nils Frahm. They compose together the material of the EP Ellis, a series of minimalist pieces published on the jazz and experimental label ECM.
His second album, S16 released in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic: “I love symbols, it’s something very exciting in terms of storytelling. S16 evokes toxicity, the idea of infection and the murky feelings floating around in the air. I thought the album was going to be released in a more peaceful moment, but it’s true that it takes on another meaning today”, he analyzes then for Progress.
Percussions, powerful bass and a kind of mechanical roll in the background… No wonder Mylène Farmer chose this artist with a thousand talents to compose her electro-pop requiem evoking control, demons and hell. “At home, the dark spirit of my work is a liberation”, he already explained to Release in 2013.