We would be tempted to tell him that he will no longer need tissues, because the Comfort arrived. But you might shed a tear or two listening to Apple’s third album. The young face of French folk finds the shelves of record stores this Friday with an album of tenderness and moving melodies, carried by slightly electro arrangements that we didn’t know about.
The trajectory of this 26-year-old singer-songwriter has been meteoric: after a first album that went relatively unnoticed in 2017, the second (lagoons, 2019) brought her recognition from the public -with platinum certification- and from her peers: Best New Album Award at the Victoires de la musique in 2020, followed a year later by the trophy for best female artist. An exhibition that allowed her to make her voice heard about the causes she defends, from ecology to the fight against gender violence.
Comfort it could hardly have been better called: melancholy as it is, it often has the effect of a hug that would erase the worries that lagoons they were exploring. After analyzing her existential anguish, Claire Pommet (her real name) meets the public to talk about her childhood (Yard, In my dreams), supporting a loved one tried by life (September), or pay homage to certain female figures who had a tragic end, in particular Bárbara (b.). But also author Nelly Arcan, whose “beauty of writing and fatality of suicide shattered” Apple, as she explains on Instagram. The first single from the album is dedicated to him.
So what comfort is he talking about with these 12 new tracks? The one who wants to bring her to the public, the one she grants herself, or the one she would have liked to lavish on these women whose memory she salutes? “A bit of all three,” she replied to BFMTV.com a few days before the album’s release. Before explaining this new project, with the precision and honesty that he always shows in interviews.
Coming back after so much success, is it scary?
I had some anxious moments, especially when I started to compose. Usually that’s what cleanses my brain. But this time, all I saw was people watching me compose. I told myself that it was surely linked to the fact that I realized that now there are people who listen to my music… It is indirectly linked to success, fear of displeasing, or ‘failure’. Feelings I didn’t know when I did lagoons. The rest of the time, I managed to put myself in a creative bubble. The simple fact of being able to compose during the pandemic has been a comfort.
Because there was fear of not achieving it?
I think it was a mix of the post-success of faults, involved in the pandemic. When we were all locked up, sometimes it was difficult to project ourselves into the future, the period was not very inspiring. There was also pressure from outside, because everyone said it was time for artists to be creative, to reinvent things. While we were like the others, we had great moments of questioning what was happening.
And a few days after the release of an album that generates more expectations than the previous one, how do you feel?
I think it’s a bit the same. Of course, I am a little stressed about the reception, the reception, also because this time I invested money as a producer, so there are problems that did not exist for me before. But artistically, I’m 100% sure of what I did. Even if the album is less popular, I won’t be able to regret anything because I did exactly what I wanted to do, and at no time did I betray myself.
How did the idea of ”consolation” come about?
I wanted to talk about several things: my childhood, paying homage to female figures who inspired me… I had a hard time finding a concept that would connect all this. after writing nelly, I realized that composing this song gave me a bit of self-comfort. and found out that Comfort It was the best way to connect all these themes, in particular because it is also linked to childhood: consolation, we reserve it more for children, and we cultivate it less when we become adults. In any case, I learned to console myself, because we are not always able to ask for comfort around us.
What does consolation mean to you?
Comfort is the opposite of a solution, it is even its replacement: when we need to be comforted, it is because we are faced with a situation that has no concrete solution. . Beyond the intimate, I had the impression that it was a collective need, to make up for the lack of solutions to very distressing social problems.
I was successful during a pandemic, so I still feel like I haven’t fully understood what happened. On the one hand I am aware that it is dizzying, and on the other I maintain a detachment from this success, because I was physically detached from people. In the end, it brings me a balance, I have the impression that my life has not really changed. Of course, more people are interested in me or come to talk to me on the street, but it’s still very easy on a day-to-day basis. I can still say that I don’t particularly want to be more well known than what I’m going through right now. I’m not sure I’d appreciate more notoriety.
You participated in the liberation of women’s speech, in particular with a message published on Mediapart in which you declared having been a victim of moral and sexual harassment within the music industry. Five years after the #MeToo movement, two years after #MeTooMusic, what is your assessment?
I don’t really take stock, because it’s too depressing (laughs)… The only progress I see is that it’s become a theme. Since it has taken up space in the media space, sexist or violent behavior is likely to be less accepted. But concretely, I did not see around me that troublesome people became good people. There are many people for whom to question these issues is to lose power, rank. So I think we are at the first step of a very long road and unfortunately I am not sure I will still be alive when the attacks stop. It is like the problems of racism or ecology: what is needed is a totally different system.
“Les Failles”, “Consolation”… sounds like an answer. Can we say that one was the album of neuroses, of what one does not like about oneself, and that the other is the one of the age in which one accepts what is wrong? Right?
Exactly. when i wrote lagoonsI was in a perpetual war with myself. Today I have the impression of being calm: instead of trying to stop being anxious, to stop being afraid, I have decided to accept these emotions. I am still anxious, feeling great moments of loneliness, but it no longer seems horrible to me. I think the success of faults He’s no stranger to it: I’ve gained artistic confidence. Comfort it’s a record more focused on others, open to something more collective, and I needed it.
Apple – “Consolation” (Polydor), out this Friday, August 26
Apple will be in concert in France and in Quebec, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg starting next December
Source: BFM TV
