Sebastien Tellier: “I thought I’d be famous after Eurovision – but no one noticed” | music

A A few years ago, a stranger stole Sébastien Tellier’s identity. The conman — who wore sunglasses and the musician’s trademark beard — posed as the Frenchman at lavish parties, snatched up free clothes from Chanel (Tillier was a brand ambassador) and even held meetings with heads from Hollywood studios (Tillier was involved in the soundtrack business). “he [also] “He did a lot of drugs like ketamine in front of a lot of people,” Tellier continues completely nonchalantly from his home in Paris, sunglasses and beard present and correct. The crime only happened when a confused woman called him to tell him she was partying with Sebastien Tellier in France, only to see on Instagram that the real Tellier was performing in Belgium.

This experimentation has been transformed into pop gold via Copycat, a brilliant synthpop exercise on his upcoming eighth album, Kiss the Beast. “My name you steal / Hat and success,” Tellier sings for the song’s chorus over a chunky bass line, disco strings, and synths that crackle and shoot like fireworks. He’s a typical Tellier, mixing seriousness – things got so bad with the crook that Tellier briefly had to show his passport at the school gates when he collected his two young children – with playful naiveté.

It’s a theme he’s used throughout his career, whether combining the majestic Tony Allen-assisted dreamscape La Ritournelle, a “pop classic” according to friend Nicholas Godin of Air, with a song called Ketchup vs Genocide on 2004’s Politics; Or, four years later, performing his stylish Beach Boys-electropop single Divine, co-produced by Daft Punk legend Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, at Eurovision. It’s hard to imagine anyone else associated with the great French touch scene approaching the parody song contest, let alone getting to the stage via a mini golf cart.

“I don’t want to be a slave to good taste,” he says, surrounded by a halo of cigarette smoke and holding his phone under his chin. “To be just Eurovision, it’s a nightmare,” he continues. “But to be fair [fancy Parisian hotel] Plaza Athene, it’s a nightmare too. Sometimes it’s really nice to just eat a burger.

The title and artwork for “Kiss the Beast,” the latest shot by revered French fashion photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, may explore Tellier’s “profound contradiction and duality,” but musically it also features comic snatches of sheep singing (on Mouton), while the Loup (or “Wolf”) lounge jazz is constantly disrupted by bursts of frenetic electronic wiggling. It’s about balance, believes Tellier: “You know, it’s extremely important. It’s important to feel comfortable in all aspects of life.”

Last year, Tellier turned 50, a milestone age that seemed to unlock something inside him. Realizing that “there’s not a long way to go before death,” he wanted this album to reach a larger audience. That’s why Kiss the Beast features collaborations with the likes of Nile Rodgers and Kid Cudi, as well as production input from Oscar Holter, the Max Martin label whose notable resume includes Blinding Lights by the Weeknd. Holter’s presence seems like an interesting mainstream move for an artist who seems happy on the fringes of pop music, I suggest to Tellier.

“It’s hard to explain, but in a way I want to respect my age,” he says. “My favorite album when I was 20 was Rupert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom. You know, that kind of ‘I’m a mad man, I feel bad, I hate the world.'” He sucks hard on his second cigarette of our time so far. “But step by step, as I’m in my 50s, I like to listen to Lionel Richie or Barbra Streisand.”

Tellier’s early love for White reflects his mentality growing up in the “difficult” area of ​​Cergy-Pontoise, northwest of Paris. “I was scared to see the bad guys. I was scared on the bus. I was scared at the train station and all that crap,” he says as he gets up and walks around his house. The newly built city of Cergy-Pontoise offered nothing but tangible life. “So no culture, no soul. I was very sad. If you are in the city but near the sea, for example, you can dream of the sea. But in this new city, on the far outskirts of Paris, there were no mountains, no beautiful river, no ocean, nothing like that.”

He says he felt like it was just him and his father listening to music, which isolated them from their strange little “island of culture.” After moving into his first “crappy” apartment in Paris, he began composing his own music on a four-track tape recorder. He also drank a lot. “I lived kind of a brutal life,” he says. “I partied too much and didn’t take care of myself at all.” One night, that all changed after he saw the music video for Air’s Kelly Watch the Stars on TV. “I felt a connection between myself and their music,” he explains. “Like pop, electro, and at the same time international, but French.”

He noticed that the name of Air’s then company, Source, appeared on the screen, and a few days later Tellier took his demo tape to their offices. After a short meeting, his dark-colored Fantino was added to a collection the company was releasing, which sits alongside Phoenix and several other “cool French guys.” Shortly thereafter, Air launched their own label, Record Makers, and signed Tellier. He would also support them on tour in 2001. “We played like 2,200 times,” he says, still in awe. “This part of my life was really important because with them I discovered the world and with them I escaped my old, sad world.”

Across a career that has now spanned a quarter of a century, he has never looked back, playfully crossing genres and exploring concepts. He’s keen to point out the latter. “That’s not understandable,” he smiles. “Oh, it would be boring.” “No, no, no. For me, it’s very important to give some spark to my concepts, because just a concept is so boring. A concept movie, everything is conceptual, it’s boring!” In 2012’s My God Is Blue, for example, he meditates on religion while dressed as a cult leader, while 2020’s Domesticated — a title suggested by his friend, the film’s director, Sofia Coppola — celebrates his life with his wife, Amandine Martinon de la Richardière, and his children through songs like the hypnotic sci-fi ballad “Household Tasks.”

However, his biggest WTF moment remains his Eurovision performance. Not that Tellier feels any shame. He knew he wasn’t going to win (he finished 19th) and only did it because “a lot of people watch the TV show.” If anything, he wants his performance to be even weirder. His initial plan was to drive his golf cart directly out of the theater.

“I had the opportunity to create something as huge as an accident at Eurovision. I thought: ‘I’m going to become so famous with this accident that it will be amazing in front of millions and millions of people.'” Unsurprisingly, the show’s producers deemed it too serious. Instead, he arrived on the golf cart carrying an inflatable globe filled with helium and duly inhaled it. “But no one noticed,” he says. It wasn’t visible enough.” “Nobody saw it. No one talked about it.”

It is this disconnect between idea and execution, between artist and audience, that Tellier cannot tolerate. I asked him if he agreed with Godin’s assessment of “La Ritournelle,” a song that has soundtracked everything from a sports montage to a L’Oréal commercial to an episode of Come Dine With Me, and — in 63 million plays on Spotify alone — has been his biggest hit ever. “Yes, [it is a classic] “In a way, because it’s an important song for a lot of people,” he says, briefly substituting nicotine for caffeine. “They play this song at weddings, or at funerals. You know, for important moments in life. So it has a special place in the heart of the audience.”

Creating a bridge for them is what he always tried to do. Only now is it done via big pop songs about crooks, wolves and sheep.

Kiss the monster out January 30; Teller plays KOko, London, 23 March.