The Gallic wonder who rips up every rule book
Christine and the Queens
‘Vive la France!” shouted a British voice in the crowd. “Vive everyone!” the French pop star generously shouted back. She came, she danced, she conquered. Héloïse Letissier, the Gallic wonder who bills herself as Christine and the Queens, reigned supreme at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. It is rare that British audiences take French pop stars particularly seriously, but Letissier is the smartest, most innovative and inspirational artist in popular music right now, and her loyal subjects adore her.
She brought her retinue of four musicians and six dancers across the Channel and staged something never witnessed before – which, alone, is astonishing. For the second time this year an audacious artist has gone back to the drawing board and rethought the whole live experience.
The first was veteran new wave genius David Byrne, with his joyous American Utopia revue, featuring a squad of tightly drilled dancing musicians in ever shifting configurations. Now it was the turn of the 30-year-old Letissier, promoting what is only her second album. A late starter to pop, she studied theatre in Lyon and Paris, and her background showed in a production that (like Byrne’s) was minimalist and spartan yet brilliantly thought through. Effects – from snowfalls and sandstorms to thunder and lightning – were created with simple backdrops and stark lighting. Musicians shifted about on mobile platforms, altering the architecture of the stage. Dancers interacted with Letissier, enacting the psychodramas of Letissier’s journey from insecurity to the freedom she felt embracing a gender-fluid identity. “I was Christine but you can call me Chris,” she announced. “I feel so much stronger now. I can sing better and run faster, too!”
With hair cropped short, wearing trousers and a vivid red shirt, she has adopted a quasi-masculine persona for her latest album, Chris, with songs tapping into the big gender issues of our times. Crucially, though, she doesn’t put message before melody. This was a set of great pop, bristling with hooks, wit and emotion. And her singing really has got better. After five years on the road since her 2014 French debut, Chaleur Humaine, Letissier’s voice is flexible and expansive, with a full low tone and sensitive upper range. She was confident enough to lead the crowd in a wonderful a-cappella singalong of French ballad Nuit 17 à 52 before breaking into a delightful coda of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror.
The charm and intimacy of that moment lay at the core of Letissier’s appeal. Everything was designed to draw the audience in rather than bedazzle and bombard, never more so than in a finale that saw Letissier appear on the balcony of the upstairs circle before leading a triumphant procession through the venue and back to the stage, held aloft on the shoulders of dancers, serenading the enthralled crowd pressing around her. The Hammersmith Apollo thundered for an encore at a volume rarely heard among jaded London gig goers.
Long live la reine!