I know that a song is working when I can properly dance on it.
— Christine and the Queens
I trust people who look like animals.
I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.
Tapping into a more masculine, macho culture, I got in touch with my femininity, but differently. Macho culture is also pride of the body and showing it off - a relationship to theatricality, to construction. It's about owning your narrative again.
I remember writing '5 Dollars' out of intense listening sessions of Bruce Springsteen. I don't know if it's obvious, but I was obsessed with how limpid Bruce Springsteen's melodies are: It's such a great way to do storytelling and to still be melodic and catchy.
Every masculine hero narrative I could find I wanted to steal for myself and twist to my size.
I always knew I wanted to be a woman in men's clothing because I just feel good like that. I feel like I'm taking a different space: I move differently; I'm more at ease.
I've always really been interested in observing people's postures, the way they speak with their hands, the way they communicate things with their body language.
I've always been obsessed with being on stage and putting shows together.
I love funny women.
When you write, you don't really think of how honest you are being - it's only when you record that you understand how much of yourself you're giving.
That's part of what made me interested in theater as a kid. It made it acceptable to be a man for an hour onstage.
The gender question has always obsessed me.
I'm kind of an obsessive person, and touring is repetitive in the best way.
I'm kind of resistant to being told no, not being wanted. It fills me with energy.
Festivals are happy places, and you don't really want to enjoy them on your own.
Queer is about intense questioning that can't be made nice and glossy.
Basically, when I like a song, I have to dance.
I use Twitter to be my best self: fun, dateable. I don't get paranoid with Twitter, only in real life. I write so I feel comfortable, not speaking.
I love the idea of constantly altering yourself.
I think 'Chris' is way more about that, about living desire as a force of chaos and about reveling in that chaos.
Dancing, for me, is like a second language. It's the best way for me to get out of my shell and be expressive in a very personal way.
I always wanted to be Romeo, not Juliet. Romeo is a much cooler way to be - Juliet's just up in a balcony, waiting.
I think I used Christine, who is my stage character, as an excuse to finally be myself, as if I needed to say, 'Oh this character is going to be the woman I wanted to be.'
Typically, in France, someone in my position should keep their mouth shut. I'm an entertainer, operating in the realm of pop, and it's often looked down upon for a pop artist to take a stand, to have convictions or opinions. But I don't think the two are incompatible or mutually exclusive.
When I have to take phone calls, I start to sweat and panic. Being on the phone is so weird - hearing a voice without seeing the face so you can't really know the intention behind the voice.
I have Googled so many things related to possible diseases, and it's always ridiculous. Like, 'My toe is hurting. Do I have cancer?' 'I have a scratch in my eye. Am I going to die soon?' 'Is eating a soup going to make me die?'
I wanted 'Comme si' to immediately indicate that something changed in my life, mainly because I became the hero of my own desires instead of just dreaming about them.
Male rock stars are sexy because they desire you first. I want to be like that.
When the image that I built around the first album was crumbling, it was scary: the risk pays off, but the resonances of that risk are not always easy to deal with.
I've always been the one who is more enthusiastic about Christmas than my family. I regress to a child state, chanting carols.
My whole life is queer.
It's always odd to me when people say, 'Where does Heloise finish and Chris start?' It's the same thing. I'm just putting a theatrical form to my expression.
I don't remember my 20s as a good place.
When you dance, you own everything you have. You are really in your own body. You do it with your muscles and your bones and your weight and your height - it's how to love yourself by moving.
I broke up with my first girlfriend because I was out of love. I was crushing so hard on her for a whole year, and I finally I got to be with her, and the interest vanished. I'm a terrible person. I was 17, and she was in my class.
I enjoy this confusion. Heloise? Christine? Chris? Maybe I will be called C at some point.
Christine and the Queens is born out of a particular moment in my life where I was quite low.
The core of all the music I love is a good bass line and a good rhythm.
There are lots of ways to be a feminist. Beyonce, for example, is a beautiful example of feminine sensuality and is still really powerful. My character and my inner essence is more like an awkward 15-year-old boy, like a teenager backstage, like, 'Yeah, what's up?' That's what I'm trying to channel.
The way I dress definitely helps me embody and actually change my way of behaving and feel more confident.
That's pretty much how I feel on stage, like I can let go of all kinds of baggage, or even disappear and change outfits. I want to remind people that they can grant themselves the license to do the same.
I'm terrified of dying because of everything being too unfinished. I would be happy being a ghost.
No matter what you eventually become - free, empowered - the lingering feeling of 'once an outsider, always an outsider' is very vivid for me.
I invented Christine as a survival technique. I was inspired by the idea that everyone could have a Christine inside to wake.
In real life, I feel tiny and quite embarrassed all the time. But when people come up to me in France and want to talk to Christine, it's okay. It's cool. Because they're really talking about themselves, their own Christines.
The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.
Because I'm experimenting so much with gender-bending and listening to everything that happens to me in terms of genderless energies, I have a hard time finding partners that can match me.
I love trying to match a really hard expectation.
For some people, it's impossible to escape binaries.
