Belgian pop favourite Angèle on how the Paris Olympics changed her career

0:13Angèle:Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I am Fernando Augusto Pacheco and this week is a special Monaco Weekly. I had the pleasure to speak with Belgian pop favorite Angèle. She paid us a visit here at Midori House to talk about her unconventional upbringing, what inspires her songwriting and her summer playlist, of course.

1:07Angel, I will start with the basics, if you don't mind. Let's start with the basics. Because for me, when I think of Belgium, I think of you. Wow. You know, I think you're a representation of Belgium's soft power. What's your relationship with that? Because you have a very famous song that talks about that in a way, right? Yeah, you mean Bruxelles. Yes, I feel like it is a fun thing to be part of a country like Belgium. Belgium has so many to offer. It's an absurd little crazy country. Absurd, interesting. It's super absurd. We're very good at using absurdity in humor, but also like politically.

1:53And I think being Belgian is knowing how to make fun of yourself just because nothing is ever so serious. And I love that about it. That's a very good answer, actually. And of course, for people who are big fans of yours and who have seen your documentary, you grew up in quite an artistic family. But it's interesting, as a known Belgian, I didn't know your parents. I wouldn't necessarily associate you with your parents. But I think growing up in Belgium must be a different feeling, right? Really depends where. Because we have two languages. There's the Flamish part and there's the French part.

2:31And so that's how I've been very lucky because having artist parents really got me motivated to be who I am today and inspired. And I have so many things I can say about that. And I would say that just choosing music as my studies, for example, was thanks to my parents. And I could never forget that because I know that I was at school and 99 % of my friends were just struggling with trying to explain to their parents that they were making the right choice. I never had to do that. And my parents were just supportive. And also it just allowed me to know what it meant to be an artist in Belgium because it's a small country.

3:18It is separated by two languages. so it is like a region. You're from the French part. I'm from the French part. But I'm from Brussels, so it's very central. And I studied in the Flemish part in Antwerp, but I grew up in the French part. So it feels like I got very lucky to have parents that knew a lot about being artists and being vulnerable and doubting and just exposing yourself. But the very being famous part was never really my life. and I'm glad and I feel like that was a luck by itself because I'm happy that I didn't have to grow up with famous parents and now I'm like, if I want to be a parent one day, I need to figure out how to protect my children from that because I've become famous when I was 21.

4:08It's almost been 10 years now and I still don't really know how to deal with it. So whenever you have children involved, I guess that must be a whole world. And so in my part, I had the connection with that artist world, but without the celebrity world, which I feel very happy and like even privileged by. And do you still, actually, I don't know about this. Do you still live in Bruxelles? Yeah, yeah. I do. I actually never left. It's so convenient. You had a stint in Paris, right? No, actually, it's just that I've been touring so much in Paris for years that I ended up spending a lot of time there and having friends there and even love stories there.

4:52But I never left Belgium and it has been a question at some part of my life where it was like, do I want to leave? But it's so convenient because it's like an hour and a half by train from Paris. So I can get very easily in Paris. So I feel like I stayed in my home and near my parents, and my friends in a place where, I don't know, there's like a giant park next to where I live. And that's where I feel the most safe because I feel like I do stay in Paris sometimes. And, you know, I spent a lot of time there in the last years. And I know the city pretty well now, but there's no place in Paris that I feel as safe as I do in Brussels.

5:34Rochelle Jatim, right? Yes, exactly. And one thing, I don't know if it's because as well of your parents, But I've noticed that in your music career, you're very considered, you know, you kind of control when you're releasing an album. I feel that you're very much, you make your own choices, which a lot of people presume that a pop star, you know, there are a lot of people behind all those exact people. But I don't think it's your case. No, thank you. No, it's true. And again, not to speak about my parents too much, but it is true that they have a big role. And at first, I think I was younger and my ego was telling me to take all of the credit for myself.

6:13But I have to be honest, having parents that were. So my dad is a musician and my mom is a comedian. And I've seen them just choosing a life with the job of their dreams. And that's something I grew up with that idea. And I grew up with this audacity to think that that was just the norm. and now that I'm a real adult I know that this is the biggest privilege ever and so I think when I started I was like if I want to make music I want to be in in control I don't want to be stuck in a situation that I won't be happy with and I mostly did of course I had bad experiences with the industry as everyone and it's like a whole world that you need to learn to live in but I've always been very independent no matter if musically like the music I make how I make it and if I want to get people involved it will always be people that I choose and yeah and I created my my own label and my own publishing company but all that was in the very beginning because I thought I knew what I was doing I didn't really know but I knew that I wanted to be in control and that's the one thing that I kept my whole life.

7:30It's just controlling doesn't mean to forget about being like spontaneous, but it's just about making sure that you won't get in a situation that you will not feel comfortable in. Because there's been, you know, I want to talk about newer stuff soon, but we have so many amazing collaborations. I think of Danzo as well. That's more or less where you were kind of starting your music career, right? And there was a very unlikely thing that you would open a gig for Danzo, you know? But also quite magical in many ways, right? And you still collaborate with him quite often. Super magical. So Damso, he's this Belgian rapper.

8:06And we met in 2017 now. It's been a while. And when we met, he was really starting to get bigger and bigger in France. But that was still the beginning for him. And so it's fun because now he's this huge artist. but I saw him beginning and he saw me beginning because he invited me to open for his shows and to be fully honest it hasn't been always easy because you have to imagine that his audience was like very much into rap and they were not ready to see me like being hi but actually that was one of the top five most learning experiences it's really incredible how much I've learned and how humbling it was because that was probably the most humbling thing I've ever done in my life but I think it was important to start with a difficult scenic experience to know that nothing is ever granted and you always have to fight and now whenever I found myself in festivals with like drunk people not really paying attention and I'm like I've done worse I can do this now And Damso and I, we collaborated many times.

9:20We've done many songs together. We're very good friends. I respect him so much for everything he created and everything he made possible. He's a very brilliant artist. He plays with rap. He's an amazing producer too. And he has always been interested by meeting new artists. And I've always felt kind of protected, but also it's kind of a friendship thing where I'm always happy to see him. And he's this very like calm force and he's a very like philosophic person. So, you know, I'm very lucky that we met such early in our both careers. And now we feel like it's beautiful to see each other like growing up from it.

10:02And I want to jump a few years. And I was actually there at the stadium in Paris for the closing ceremony. Talking about more magical moments. I mean, I will never forget. I mean, the way you glided through singing Night Call. Tell us about that. I mean, did anything change as well in your life after that? Tell us a bit more, because for me, it was an incredible moment. I mean, it was, I could maybe say a life-changing experience in a way, because, and first of all, nothing of that was completely planned. It was last minute. I was on vacation in Italy, eating pasta, doing nothing else but just chilling.

10:44And then I got a call and it was about Phoenix wanted me to sing Night Call. And it was, to be honest, I first was like, no, I freaked out. And it has been like, at that time, I think I haven't been on stage for like a year. I think something like that. And so I was like, oh, no, no, I'm not ready. It's been too long. Forget about me. I'm not, I'm like rusty, you know, I don't know how to perform anymore. And they insisted. it and then I asked for some time to reflect on it because I was like I don't want to take any decision that I'm going to regret and this seems like a big thing but I didn't have a lot of connection and then my managers who I still need to thank for every day they made a list of the pros and the entire like they're like okay the good thing about it is it's gonna be a great moment it might just be big it might just change your career and I was like no it's never gonna changed my career what are you talking about and then the like cons were like it is a stressful thing and you famously like internally in our team you famously don't love performing live for streaming or tv this is like kind of my nightmare but they were like but it's also maybe it was like a way for you to take back everything you left by not being confident on stage and so i thought of it and I was like okay I think this is one song I love this song I had one of my first breakup slash new rebound love story when I was 17 during a summer I love Phoenix obviously so I was like there's so many reasons to say yes and another thing is I got there so I had to like go in Paris for a week to do rehearsal fittings just for the fitting I wanted something simple and we thought with my stylist of like a kind of like a catsuit is that how do you call it and the idea was just to have something simple but strong and I had just cut my hair off a year before and it took me six months to love it because the first version of my hair were not good not for me and And then all of a sudden, my hair looked great.

13:01And that outfit was fun. And then they wanted me to walk from a point to another. And so I guess I need to like rhythm it a little bit so I don't fall with my high heels. And just to finish, because that's fun. It's like everyone is like the walk. Like, how did you come up with that idea? And you feel so confident and you know exactly what you're doing. And I've never been more stressed out in my life. because the second before the music started, people have been telling us, don't walk on these screens on the floor because they're like, you will fall. You won't make it if you walk on those. And we're like, sure.

13:37And I don't know what happened, but all of the athletes that were surrounding the stage decided to jump on the scene. And so it was like... And nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew. And it was just crazy because I remember I was about to sing and the person in charge of the organization where like well I guess you might just have to stay where you are but just the Steadicam can join you because they're like he's surrounded by people on stage and we're like trying to push people and so I was like okay and so I got on stage and I started singing and I didn't know where the camera was and so I was like I have to find the camera so I can look in it instead of just being in the emptiness and then I found him and I was like okay here's the camera here's another one and then I had this whole like catwalk for myself because they like pushed the people and they were like you gotta get off the stage and so the walk was just also a way to like slow down and to not get too quickly on the stage where people were just there and what I mean is it's fun how if I would have wanted to make something that would really make people like see me I would have done something more complicated than just walk and getting like being chill.

14:49And so that was also another learning experience because I was like, sometimes simplicity is the secret. One of the best walks I've seen, I have to say. I'm curious about your relationship with electronic music because Night Call, very electro, synthy, and your more recent collaboration of Justice as well, which is taking you to that direction. Tell us a bit more about that. It's fun how I've listened to French touch music my whole life. And it's, I think, growing up in Belgium with an older brother and with my mom has specific music taste. And so, yes, electronic music has always been part of my life when I grew up.

15:34But something I really loved about French touch was the importance of melody, the importance of chorus, nostalgic chords. And so it was just bringing, even you can see some very classic kind of like chanson française chords in some songs of Daft Punk or even just some like chords progression are incredibly musical. And that's what I love. I like love the roundness of some synthesizer and the sharpness of some bass or beats. And I grew up listening to that unconsciously. And there's so many albums that really created my musical ear and specifically my electronic musical ear. What's so interesting is that when Phoenix asked me to do this NatCol cover, I was already like doing a lot of research.

16:29It was your vibe already. Yes, completely. And maybe this is also why it worked out so well and it was so probably natural is because I was really feeling that this was like a moment where I could connect to something that I was doing and a song that I literally grew up with. now I'm I love to still like have fun with synthesizers and I met incredible artists and I wish I could say more but I definitely can say that I've been collaborating with incredible artists

17:21She's just included with what you want, but also many more. And I've seen how everyone is working differently. And it's fun how there's still a part of mystery. There's always a part of mystery in music. You never really know, how did they make that? How is this sounding so great? But then once you see people working, you see that we're kind of all doing a lot by ear, a lot by instinct. and so I could connect also with, for example, when we were working on What You Want, the few times we met in the studio and the few times we did music together, we were working on the same program, Appleton. And so I was so fascinated that all of a sudden I had the justice guy in front of me working on a tiny computer because we were like on remote.

18:06We were like in a hotel room and that's the only place that we found to work on the song and no speakers, just the speakers of the laptop on Ableton. And I was like, I guess we're not so different. So that's the whole thing about electronic music is there's just so many ways to make it. And not everything has to be complicated. And one interesting thing that, you know, it's not the first time, but you're singing more in English as well. I do. Do you like that? I love singing in English. It is fun. And so my relationship with singing has been changing a lot and it's still changing today. Weirdly, believe me or not, but I still can consider me as a singer because I feel like I don't feel like a singer.

18:53I don't have any like actual technique. I do, of course, with the years after almost 10 years of doing that, I had to take some like singing lesson. but I've never been like considering myself as a singer at least until I was like oh I guess I am a singer and I don't want this to sound like potential or whatever but it is really true that I more see myself like as a songwriter like producer even like storyteller than the actual singer because whenever like if you like hand me a mic I might fuck up because of how stressed up I would be and that's something that I need to work and I'm like honestly to be honest trying to even work on my stress like with just singing so it is fun to start that I didn't really grow up singing not in front of everyone like I have one video of me singing when I was a child and it was a karaoke and I was holding the mic and this video makes me cry because I can see how insecure I was with my voice so this is just to tell how much singing was never really a thing but then I did a jazz call and we needed to sing and I realized that I was missing a lot of technique and so I did some like singing lesson with an incredible teacher and he showed me a lot of like jazz technique and it was a lot about improvising and a way to place your vocal in a way to sing with the freedom of improvising and that was in English so the first step to singing to feel like okay now I am singing and I'm not embarrassed of it was in English.

20:29So that's my first relationship to like singing for someone else. There's something about the tone of your voice when you sing French, English, whatever language. It's hard to explain, like Night's Call, but it's very crystalline. There's something quite soft about it, even when the beat can be a harsh electrobeat, but your voice is always very soft. I love the idea of you can't fight. I mean I can't Celine Dion might but I couldn't fight with a Justiz production for example my voice is way too small but I have a lot of air in it and I have a lot of treble and I can like really also play with the mix and with the EQ to make those treble even more like intense and I love being able to get confronted to a very harsh production from Justiz and going with a very light like airy little vocal and I love that I never I actually when I so I send them my song with my demo vocals that I recorded in my living room without any technical things and so I needed to redo it again because it was really bad but we all loved the way it sounded and the way it was like kind of like casual it was really not overly sang and so it took me honestly days to get to find that low intensity singing and even like we like did a lot of back and forth and I would send them my vocals and they'd be like you know that word it's a little too sang can you sing it less can you like speak it a little more and I was like sure and I would come back to the studio and just take out like all of the notes because I was like we don't need it to be like sang and they were like that's a little too serious we don't need it and I really liked that they wanted it to sound like not singing and that's that's hard as well people think that probably shout or have a very powerful strong voice i mean yours is powerful but not the loud ones exactly i mean yeah and my dream is to get to also work on the power and you know stage is a place where you can try that but when i'm in the studio a studio is just this environment you can You really hear every detail.

22:50You don't have to push it. I mean, I don't have to push it. And so I love to really play with that very intimate relationship with the voice. I want an Angèle Céline duet. Maybe one day, right? You know that actually, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, but I'm just going to say it. I'm a huge fan of Céline Dion. And they asked me to write a song for her. And I did. And it didn't work out. But I'm going to try again. Do it. Because she's incredible. She's like absolutely incredible. Love those moments here. And I have to ask you, Angelica, which is fascinating about your music. It's great pop music, but it is political, you know.

23:25Songs like Ballon d 'Anne Stoncois, I mean, what a song. I mean, what that song did in France. It's quite remarkable, right? I think people should be remembered. It was around the Me Too movement. I mean, it was only a few years ago. Yes. What's important to say is that as political as it got and as it is, and when you see the video, it's like there's no doubt. It's a political song. But when I wrote it, it was just a pure train of thoughts out of my head, being like, I want to say that I feel bad. I've been like harassed in a subway that day in the tramway. And I was like, what's going on with rap music?

24:05Why do they speak so badly with women? I want to say something about it. And all of that was just numbers and a list of things that I felt that were off. And they were all part of the same problem, which is sexism in the bigger picture. And so I wrote that song, not knowing that it was a political song. And again, I think in my life, things has been big whenever I didn't know that they would get big. And so when we did the video, that was already a few months after the album got out, my first album. was Brøl, and I had a lot of attention. So when we did the video, I realized the impact of that whole thing, and I had an idea that I really had to be serious about what I was going to say in that video, and it was a lot of pressure, and I was 22, 23.

24:56And so that video, I'm still today, I mean, it's been a long time I haven't watched it, but I'm very proud of what we've done with or 23-year-old brains. I've done it with an incredible artist, Sharota Bramov, and she's Belgian too. We were so dedicated to it, and we spent months writing it because we wanted to be as precise and true and intersectional as possible. I'm sure if I would have to make a video about it today, first, I would freak out because I'd be like, this is so bold to have such a strong anti-sexism academy. I'm like, what was I thinking? You were strong, the lyrics. I saw the video yesterday, just to tell you again, you know.

25:38Yeah, it's so fresh. It's so spontaneous. It's so carefree. It's very serious about it. It's very aware of the situation, at least my vision of it in 2018, 19. But it's also very light and free. And whenever you get more famous and more old, I would say, I think I can say that now that I'm 30. This hyper-awareness makes you a little less spontaneous, and I sometimes miss it. And so this video also shows how much I... It was like starting from my heart. I was like, no, something is wrong. And Me Too was peaking, and we say balance ton pas in France. I really didn't know, and trust me, it seems crazy to say that today, but I really didn't know that I was like leaning in such a huge political change and like a beginning of something.

26:34You did your way. And I think sexism, LGBT rights, all these major topics, you can make it in a very personal way, right? Not necessarily the most obvious. Of course. It's the same way as Taren, who was that song about two girls falling in love. Actually, one girl falling in love and the other being a little more not sure. and how many stories we've heard like that. But again, nothing in my head was like, I'm going to write a song about this. It was just my best friend was going through that story. I felt connected to that story too. And the same way I was talking about everything in my life, I felt like talking about it.

27:16And then it just became something bigger than me. And when myself, I got outed from the press and I had to face homophobia and queerphobia. It was shocking. I remember from your documentary. It was super shocking, but it was also interesting how I was like, all of a sudden I felt that I also wrote Taryn for myself. And I was like, yeah, I mean, I guess now it's helpful to sing that song on stage. And now it's not a secret for anyone anymore. And I feel completely fine and comfortable with my sexuality. and I feel like I can embrace it even more. But it is true that when I was younger, it was kind of a long way.

27:57You are libre. Exactly. As your son would say. Well, we're approaching the end, but I need to ask a few, some light questions. How's Pepette? Pepette, my dog. How old's Pepette? Sorry to interrupt. Pepette is six years old. Oh, still young. I wish she would. Yeah, but she's getting old now. She has like very white hair. She's with my mom now. Oh, very nice. I liked your mom from the documentary as well. And, Eugard, give me a little idea of your cultural diet. What do you like to listen? I know you like your French touch, but do you watch many films? What do you like to listen to it musically?

28:29I've watched so many films after my tour because I felt like I missed seven, eight years of watching movies. And all of a sudden I had so much time to go to the movie. so I couldn't even know where to start but I'd love to go to the theater actually I'd love to go to see a movie recently I saw the drama I also saw Hail Mary two very different ones, loved it that's the two more recent I've seen but I've seen so many movies recently and I try to go to the movies as much as I can You've done quite a lot of voiceovers for animations Yes, I have, that's true So you are an actress as well I mean, and I love it.

29:13It's just that my movie culture was really low and so I needed to get back on it. You're talking about culture and this has nothing to do with culture, but it's like a way of living. I think I needed to gain a little bit of freedom after my tour three years ago. And so I've learned how to drive. And the thing that it got me doing is that it made me so much free and so much in charge of my own decision. and it seems crazy but I felt like a big baby when I was always in the back of a Uber or like taxi and being able to like drive my own car made a big change and now I listen to a lot of music to a lot of podcasts musically I listen to a lot of artists and still the same as I've always been listening to but recently there were like a lot of like European artists actually and I am super excited to see artists like, you know, from Zara Larsson to Pink Pantress to Rosalia to Amaya, incredible Spanish artists.

30:16She recently did a tiny desk where she's playing flute with a chair. I don't know if you've seen that. Crazy. Genius. Little mischievous little chair flute player. Yeah, so many incredible European artists. Theodora from France. So good. So I got super excited recently to see how many women, how many incredible women, like female artists. And I'm sure I'm forgetting so many.

31:13Thank you very much, Angel.

31:19Angèle:Merci. And the interview of Angel is also in the July-August issue of Monaco. The show was edited by Jack Dewars, and I am Fernando Gusto Pacheco.

31:31Thank you.