‘People took advantage’: Coeur de Pirate reflects on coming out
Indie pop singer Coeur de Pirate received a harsh reminder about the perils of public life when she came out as queer nearly two years ago.
Between the nasty messages posted on internet forums and articles that carried some judgment, the musician saw an intended moment of solidarity with the LGBTQ community turned into an ugly fiasco by some outsiders.
But the Quebec performer, born Beatrice Martin, doesn’t regret speaking out for herself in the wake of the shootings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. She only regrets the feelings that some threw back at her.
“Some people don’t feel the need to do it, I kind of did,” the 28-year-old singer said before the June 1 release of her new album. “People really took advantage of it,” she added.
Martin also sets the record straight, saying that while she’s written about being queer, she specifically identifies as “pansexual,” meaning her attraction toward people isn’t limited by sex or gender identity boundaries.
Her relationship with Laura Jane Grace, the transgender frontwoman of punk band Against Me!, became tabloid fodder, especially in French media publications and forums where some readers levelled scrutiny on the pair.
“It was horrible,” she said. “I was showing that I was an accepting person and I was open to everything — and I am. I’m happy about everything and people are just destroying me for it, which shows we still have a long way to come. But it was rough.”
On Couer de Pirate’s new French-language album, “En cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé” or “In case of a storm, this garden will be closed,” she comes to terms with the tumult of the past few years, which included a separation from her husband and some extreme writer’s block.
It came to a head last summer when she returned from a seemingly endless run of festival dates, which had taken a toll.
“I didn’t manage myself properly,” the singer said. “I got sick a lot, I was very tired and I took on all the responsibilities of producing the show myself, so the financial responsibilities were huge.”
Coming home, she felt exhausted and wasn’t able to focus on writing new songs. That’s when she started turning to bottles of wine.
“Drinking heavily, all the time summer vibes, just drowning in rosé,” she said. “I was numbing myself to everything that happened to me over the past few years.”
Martin said she wasn’t a “textbook alcoholic,” but after throwing back enough glasses, she started to recognize a problem.
“I stopped and I thought, ‘OK I have to quit drinking. Maybe that’ll help.’ And it did. It completely did,” she said.
“Everything came rushing back. All the emotions that I had repressed, all the experiences, everything. I was just like, wow a lot of stuff went down and I didn’t talk about it.”
Her new album revisits “every traumatic experience” that she neglected to acknowledge.
The opening track “Somnambule” recounts being caught in a relationship fraught with mixed emotions and a connection that’s slowly disintegrating, while “Combustible” explores the fragility of love with a “broken being.”
The singer, who has a young daughter, said she’s looking forward to releasing her latest round of songs, and perhaps distancing herself from the process which led to its creation.
“It’s nice ‘cause you know how, the songs, they are mine and now soon they’re going to be everybody’s,” she said. “But it was like giving birth, literally.”