Christine to Chris: “I’m working on a different version of femininity”
“I had two options: I could comfortably sit, or I could risk it all”
Hélöise Letissier, known as Christine and the Queens, has just scored a remarkable set of fivestar reviews for her live show (including one from this paper). It was spectacular, featuring snow, sand, and Letissier at the centre of a cohort of dancers, theatrically bringing to life the themes of identity and lust that feature in her powerful album, Chris.
She is just as playfully theatrical in person. In her hotel room in London’s Hammersmith, the Nantes-born artist bounces up to make coffee, a neckerchief adding Gallic flair to the monochrome sweatshirt that swamps her petite, but muscular, frame. “I’m hosting,” she announces. Then, on seeing my sheets of questions, she says, archly: “Ooh, all for me?”
Before she established Christine and the Queens, Letissier studied theatre. “I wanted to be a stage director,” she says. When she started planning the show, it was for arenas back home. “I didn’t want to rely on what could be expected from an arena – I wanted to go the opposite. It was linked to the physicality of the album – I wanted something organic that could be more impressive than LED screens.”
So she looked to her theatre background and the radical choreographer Alain Platel. “It’s true that my references are almost more linked to theatre and opera than classic gig stage designs,” she says, referring to the technical challenge of using snow and sand in different venues each night. “Because it’s crazy, everyone got invested in it like crazy.”
It was inevitable that everyone would invest in Letissier’s masterplans wholeheartedly. Her album, Chaleur Humaine, became the UK’S biggest-selling debut in 2016, following her breakout performance at Glastonbury that year, and found her onstage with Madonna, championed by Paul Mccartney and performing with Elton John. While her bilingual, electro-pop debut announced her as Christine and brought queer identity and gender fluidity into the mainstream, her follow-up, ramping up her sound with irresistible 80s funk and squelchy synths inspired by Michael Jackson, saw her adopt newfound swagger as Chris.
Some suggested it was a marketing ploy, which Chris laughs off: “It was actually a really bad marketing thing to do. Even my record label was a bit scared – they were like, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’”
For Chris, who cites David Bowie and Kanye West as inspirations because they “never got comfortable”, taking risks is essential. “I had two options: I could comfortably sit, or I could risk it all. If I’m a bit scared, it means that I’m challenging things a bit more. And also I had to be true to who I became, and thanks to everything that happened to Chaleur Humaine, I was in a slightly different place – I was more Chris than Christine.”
As well as lopping off the end of her name, she also cropped her hair. “I always wanted to have short hair, but I was afraid because my jaw is quite square,” she says. “I can’t believe I didn’t do it before. It made me more confident with the playfulness of identity, but also connected me with a part of femininity that I enjoy more now.”
Chris identifies as pansexual, and was amused at how, when she re-emerged with short hair, people assumed she was transitioning. “Are you still in that narrow definition of masculinity? I think people are infuriated when you don’t choose – it’s like, is she a man now? No, I’m just working on a different version of femininity.
“With short hair I can play even more. If I dress really masculine, I can totally be mistaken for a man, but also if I want to be a badass woman in a dress with short hair, I can. So it’s kind of empowering.” She points out that even her initial character Christine was, at first, “born out of a way to break free”.
London is where it all began. Christine and the Queens formed after a breakup prompted her to head for the city. At a time when she was grappling with expressing her identity, she found comfort in a group of drag queens at the venue Madame Jojo’s.
“Before Chaleur Humaine ,Ihad huge self-esteem issues,” she says.
“Chaleur Humaine was like away to introduce myself. It’s like a shy people heaven because the songs were already telling my story, and people listened and accepted me for who I was trying to be. I was like, ‘OK, maybe I can breathe a bit looser now and accept myself a bit more’.
Now 30, she subscribes to the stereotype of life becoming easier for women with age. “I don’t remember the twenties as a good place,” she says. “I feel like the more I’m getting older, the more I fit in.”
She turns mischievously to the feminist perspective: “I do love the idea of getting old in that industry. They’re going to want me to hide at some point because I’ll be too old and” – here, she switches to a stage whisper – “I’m going to stay! With the wrinkles and everything.
“Age is sexy on a man: silver fox. I’m going to be a silver fox myself – I’m going to stay with lots of jewellery on my hands, coloured sunglasses, and maybe I’ll fake smoking.”
“There will be a cloud of smoke and an old lady and they’ll say, ‘This is Chris!’ and I’ll go ‘yeah’. I can’t wait to rock that.”