Coeur de Pirate opens her heart even wider in new album
Coeur de pirate has never shied away from difficult emotions, but she digs deeper than ever on her new album, exploring and rising above personal trauma
Béatrice Martin tells it like it is.
Martin — who goes by the name Coeur de pirate in her professional life as one of Quebec’s most successful singer-songwriters — is brutally honest, whether she’s on Twitter (it’s really her tweeting, not some corporate PR drone, as is the case with most pop stars), talking to journalists or writing songs.
The honesty is all the more impressive given she’s a major star — she hit it big in France soon after the release of her debut album in 2008, becoming one of the most influential Québécois artists in francophone Europe.
Her new album, En cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé, is a perfect example of her candid songwriting. The much-anticipated French album, which will be released on Friday, is Coeur de pirate’s most personal collection yet, all about the trauma she has lived through in recent years. She has been through a number of painful breakups, and has openly admitted she dealt with the distress in part by drinking too much.
One song, Je veux rentrer, is about conjugal rape. It contains the lyrics: “Et j’ai voulu crier, m’emporter car je souffre quand tu es en moi / Mais le doute se forme, m’emprisonne car je suis censée t’aimer.” (And I wanted to scream, take me because I suffer when you’re in me / But the doubt settles in and imprisons me because I’m supposed to love you.)
She didn’t write these songs because of #MeToo, but clearly the themes of talking openly about abuse and abusive relationships fit into the zeitgeist.
“It’s a great movement,” Martin said Friday, hours after Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape, sexual misconduct and sex abuse. “I love that people were like, ‘Oh yeah, nothing ’s gonna happen, (Weinstein) won’t get arrested’ — and now he’s getting arrested. It’s so good. I think right now there are men in power who have abused for so many years, and they are scared right now. And social media is such a powerful tool for that.”
Martin also made a big splash by coming out as queer or “pansexual,” basically suggesting her attraction to people is not limited by sex or gender identity boundaries.
One of her relationships was with transgender lead singer Laura Jane Grace of the punk band Against Me!
The same week in 2016 that she penned a column announcing her pansexuality, she revealed she was set to divorce her husband, the father of her daughter Romy.
“I think it’s important to not keep certain things taboo and to explain to people that even us musicians, we go through things,” Martin said. “And that they’re not alone, which is part of our responsibility as public personas. Then again, not everybody chooses that route. But I did.”
Martin likens her new album to Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Childish Gambino’s recent single This Is America, in the sense that they’re mainstream pop records that are musically appealing but convey heavy-duty sentiments.
“I think it’s important to move on from traumatic experiences if you can to re-appropriate the events that happened to you, which is what I’m doing with this album,” Martin said. “I have been through trauma and things that are not cool, but they don’t own me. So the way the music is so upbeat is my way of saying ‘f--- you’ to whatever happened to me.”
Coeur de pirate’s work has always been steeped in pop from France, and En cas de tempête is a tribute to the mainstream French pop sounds of the ’70s. The music is light and bouncy, in stark contrast to the raw, poetic lyrics.
“It’s very much about realizing my own demons and how I’ve been repeating the same patterns constantly,” Martin said. “I’ve been repeating what I know best, which is being bullied as a kid and choosing my partners as a result of that — choosing people that treat me badly, because that’s what I knew. And how integrated sexism has dictated a lot of the events that are portrayed on this album. It’s completely therapeutic. I’m very lucky that I have that to express myself.”
Coeur de pirate has always exposed her often-tormented inner emotional life in her songs, from her self-titled debut album to her bilingual 2015 collection Roses, the latter winning her a new audience among Englishspeaking fans. But she says the new album marks an emotional breakthrough.
“I feel there’s a before and after this album,” said Martin. “Before, I always thought I knew what I was getting myself into and that these bad things just seemed to happen to me. Whereas now I realize my subconscious was putting me in those situations. I was actively seeking these situations. It’s bad, and that takes a while to realize.
“Also, what happened to me when it comes to sexual aggression … I thought it was my fault for a while. Now I know it was not my fault. But it’s such a process. You’re just trying to figure out where you stand and who belongs in this body.
“A song like Je veux rentrer talks about conjugal rape, which wasn’t my fault at all, but like some other situations, where I didn’t get out of certain situations because I was scared of flustering the male ego, that’s straight-up integrated sexism.”
It wasn’t easy for Martin to write about what she has been through, but the way she tells it, she didn’t have any choice.
“I’ve been through many phases with this album,” Martin said. “I was angry, then I was sad, then I was complacent, then I was liberated. It was like going through a bad breakup, and obviously I didn’t like reliving what I’d been through. I sat at my piano crying more times than I can count, which was a new thing for me. Usually I like writing songs, and this wasn’t great. But it was really necessary.”