Becoming Christine And The Queens

Heloise Letissier, who performs as the pop act Christine and the Queens, mostly goes by Christine lately. “It feels like I chose my own name and people are acknowledging it. Even close friends start to call me Christine now,” she explains to me in a dim Holiday Inn bar in Toronto, wearing a textured black suit. It’s the same suit she will wear all day, and then wear onstage at Mod Club Theatre to perform that night. The winner of Female Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique (the French equivalent of the Grammys) this past February, Letissier is poised on the verge of American stardom as she prepares for her first U.S. tour with Marina and the Diamonds later this fall — poised to be more of Christine, more of the time. For 27-year-old Letissier, claiming Christine as an identity is sanity. Or transcendence. Christine is a far-flung self that stokes Letissier’s motivation to pursue her art. “I’m longing to be her,” Letissier says.

“Maybe it’s a trick for me to project and delay and be a coward sometimes. Maybe it’s a cheap trick,” she adds. By it she means being Christine, who perhaps represents Letissier’s consciousness ahead of her experience. The projecting and delaying is what’s beautiful about Letissier’s work. She’s not a package; she’s a becoming.

For Buzzfeed, Katherine Bernard interviews Heloise Letissier, the French singer-songwriter who performs as Christine and the Queens. Saint Claude has been on repeat in my house since I first heard it in May and this profile made me extra excited for her upcoming album. Read it here.