It does not fit into the boxes but nevertheless checked that of a first recognition: the singer Apple, with her refined folk-pop and her intimate texts is named in the category album revelation at the Victoires de la Musique.
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With Les failles , the 23-year-old young woman (in the running Friday alongside Maëlle for Maëlle and Malik Djouri for Tempéraments ) meets a great public and media response. "It's funny, I did this album so much for me, trying to erase all these public waiting stuff: I find it too nifty that it appeals to people and that it is recognized by the institution Victories, ”she told AFP.
The charm quickly acted. Like last September at the Paris evening of the 30th anniversary of FAIR, a support device for starting a career in contemporary music, of which she was a winner in 2017.
Claire Pommet, her real name, frail figure behind her guitar, plunges plumb to the audience: "You are very excited, but I'm going to calm you down." She intones I don't know how to dance , where we hear the word "faults »While the album is not yet released. Audience won. "Yes, I realized that there was no point in trying to make my music pleasant: it is music that looks like me and it is not depressing," she admits.
"Quite modest"
"She is a hybrid artist, with that classic folk side and a modern Billie Eilish aesthetic , " comments for AFP Julien Soulié, boss of FAIR.
"And she doesn't create a character for herself," he insists. This second album allows her to sweep away the frustration of the previous one, in which, trapped by "the desire to please more" , as she says, she did not recognize herself.
The texts of this great fan of the poet Paul Éluard and of the singer Barbara - who also feeds on feminist works or comics - hide nothing this time from his cracks, doubts, injuries. Nor of his homosexuality. She is not offended that this last subject comes up at length of interview: "Maybe we have to go through it, talk about it now, so that in five years we won't talk about it anymore." "
More generally, the album has a therapy side. “Oddly enough, I am quite modest with the people I know, the family. For me it's easier to go through a song: if I didn't write, I would blow up a cable ”.
"Ambitious but not killer"
"It's great to talk about intimate things with an album but it's probably not the best solution, it is possible that later I will fall into a hole. So I'm going to do both, keep writing and go talk to a shrink, ”she punctuates with a smile. Another sign of good maturity.
Not so surprising for an artist who had known what she wanted for a long time, as Thierry Meissirel, journalist with the Culture of Progress service , daily based in Lyon, city of origin of Apple, tells AFP. “A few years ago, I received a charming note, accompanying a recorded amateur CD. That said my father reads the newspaper every day and it would be nice that one day, alongside the results of the OL (Lyon football team), he falls on my Apple, " he remembers.
“One of my colleagues knew her because she was in her daughter's class, where she already had a small reputation as a singer. I contacted her and she arrived with her guitar on her back. She had an incredible voice and bizarre references for someone her age - like Dolly Parton (queen of country, note), when her music doesn't look like that. She is ambitious but not killer. He is an endearing character, ” adds Julien Soulié. Before predicting: "I don't give it long before making films, this is the kind of proposition that may interest him. "