For over a year now, there has been no bigger pop star in Europe than Zaho Mélusine Le Monies de Sagazan. She is celebrated as a sensation, as a phenomenon. As an electronic artist who has connected the chanson to the socket. And as the face of a new generation. She is still a secret that France would like to keep to itself. And one that urgently needs to be investigated.
Zaho de Sagazan is not inviting us to an audience at the George IV hotel in Paris, nor is she being chauffeured in a Bentley with tinted windows. We have arranged to meet in her studio in Nantes, a converted anti-aircraft bunker on an island in the Loire. And she is arriving in a rented Peugeot van, with one of her musicians at the wheel. “I’m just going to get something to eat!” she calls out to the reporter. “Do you want something too?”
Her debut album “La symphonie des éclairs” (The Symphony of Lightning) reached number three in the national charts. Her video clips for the singles “Tristesse”, “Aspiration” and the title track are small miracles between minimalist dance theater and great acting. Her face was on the covers of all the major magazines, she played at all the major festivals and completed a sold-out tour.
Shockingly in love with this woman
France seems to be not only madly in love with this woman. The nation also trusts her, completely. The newcomer represented the country at the Cannes Film Festival as well as in the supporting program of the Olympic Games. This is all the more surprising, as she is not a diva, not an untouchable with interesting airs and graces. Her charm is that of the girl “next door”, from the country, even from the deep provinces. Despite this – or because of this – the 24-year-old Breton has managed to hopelessly turn the heads of the entire country in just one year.
She accepted the French Grammy, the “Victoire de la Musique,” for her album in tears. The trophy, a V made of steel bars, stands on an old clavinet in the studio, right in front of the gold record for “La Symphonie des Eclairs” and a gold medal from SACEM, the French GEMA. Next to it, a cactus is dying of thirst, and behind a palm tree decorated with Christmas baubles, leans a copy of “Les Inrockuptibles,” the country’s most important music magazine. Cover story: “The 30 French artists the world will envy us.” Cover photo: Zaho de Sagazan in a large checked jacket, blue shirt and red striped tie.
She comes in in person, licks her fingers, puts the bucket of Asian noodles on the clavinet and takes the magazine from the reporter’s hand. “I was dressed up,” she says, adding that she enjoys it. But she prefers working in the studio. And that’s really something. The walls are painted red, the light from a neon tube is reflected in a disco ball. Below, outdated electronics from the 1980s are piled up and stacked. Synthesizers from ARP and Yamaha, a cassette recorder from Panasonic, buttons, cables and an antique modular system, as can be seen on the cover of the album.
In front of the bunker’s only window is a piano. The instrument with which everything began for Zaho de Sagazan, and on which she still composes her songs today. “The piano was my best friend,” she says, gently tinkling the keys: “It opened up a new world to me.” The world of culture was already very open to her as a child and teenager.
Zaho grew up in a family of artists in nearby Sainte-Nazaire, one of five siblings. Her father is a painter and sculptor, her mother works as a teacher: “At home there were only three rules,” she says: “Eat sensibly, go to bed early – and express yourself! My family is very open, in every respect. Love, joy and chaos. Maybe that’s why I have no barriers in my head. Sometimes people think I’m crazy, but that’s deceptive. I’m just uninhibited.”
For her appointment with SPIEGEL, she took a more casual approach than she did for the local trade press. She appeared without makeup, in wide three-quarter pants, with unshaven legs and a faded Kraftwerk T-shirt: “That was the best concert of my life!” she says, flopping down into the soft leather sofa. Really? Kraftwerk?
»Mais bien sûr!«, she calls out and pulls out her smartphone to give a look at her playlist on Spotify. She adores the Belgian musician Stromae, also Koudlam, the English songwriter Tom Odell. But her playlist actually consists largely of offbeat electronic music from Germany. She plays a few songs and taps her foot: »That’s what I listen to! Doesn’t that get into your blood immediately?«
In fact, her love for Germany goes so far that it is almost strange for a German. German was her first and favorite foreign language at school. A few months as a student in Berlin fascinated her because “everything there is not as complete and closed as in Paris, dirtier, more open, just as the world is open and dirty. It seems more honest to me.” She also “really, really likes smoking weed,” and luckily Germany is more advanced than France in these areas.
What she also likes about the German capital is the ugliness; the “brutalist” architecture reminds her of her hometown: Sainte-Nazaire with its submarine bunkers was 80 percent destroyed in the Second World War and was then rebuilt in a similarly careless and hasty manner as Pirmasens or Paderborn. “Besides,” she says, clapping the reinforced concrete wall with the palm of her hand, “the Germans also built this studio.”
Boyish and almost hedonistic feminism
She recorded “99 Luftballons” by Nena in German, and without any irony. On the wall is a piece of paper with self-written instructions on how to sing the “H” in an as yet unreleased song called “Hab Sex”. The title has the potential to be a club hit, as a blunt invitation to sexual intercourse in the tradition of French classics such as “Je t’aime … moi non plus” by Serge Gainsbourg – and lives from its circling German refrain: “Hab Sex mit mir, Sex, Sex, Sex.”
It soon becomes clear that Zaho de Sagazan also “really, really likes” sex and has no inhibitions about singing about it. In such moments, a wonderfully boyish and almost hedonistic feminism comes to the fore, a self-empowerment that has previously only been seen in R’n’B – which Zaho de Sagazan also likes very much, “Beyoncé and so on, but with 54 singers and dancers and all the choreography, no, I would feel somehow trapped.”
Her highly melodic songwriting is trained in classical chanson, her performance in Jacques Brel. His “Ces gens-là” opened her eyes to the fact that all the fuss isn’t necessary: “A real feeling, a good text, courage – that’s all you need to tell a whole novel.”
At the Cannes Film Festival, she brought director Greta Gerwig (»Barbie«) to tears with a serenade. Her version of David Bowie’s »Modern Love«, barefoot in an auditorium full of tuxedos, was celebrated in France as »revolutionary«. Even the photographer gave up her professional reserve at the end and, with tears in her eyes, thanked Zaho de Sagazan for this »liberating« performance. In fact, nothing about it seemed calculated and everything was authentic – from the young singer’s enjoyment of the song, of herself and the lovely opportunity to break with conventions and make fun of the establishment.
Even more impressive was her interpretation of the chanson “Sous de ciel de Paris”, with which she opened the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Olympic Games in the Tuileries Garden, accompanied by a large choir – in front of an audience of millions worldwide and with such provocative nonchalance that it was not by chance that it bordered on cheekiness. Zaho waves it off. “It doesn’t feel like a big deal. More like it used to when I sang alone in my room. You don’t see anyone, there are only cameras. In front of a real audience of real people, that’s something completely different!”
»What she is capable of in a full hall, in front of real people, can be experienced on October 17th in Cologne and on October 18th in Berlin. A clip on YouTube worth watching gives an idea of her art: »Ne te regarde pas« is a beautiful song in the studio version that lasts barely three minutes. At her concerts, the song only begins after that. Live, she stretches the song to nine minutes by repeating the title like a mantra with contortions and grimaces, stretching, phrasing, gasping, spitting, grunting and throwing garlands into the audience before throwing herself after it. Uninhibited in the face of great emotion. Without fear of ugliness. And without the slightest effort to conform to any stereotypes. Great art.
“What I experienced last year was really crazy and can definitely change a person. But it depends on who you experience it with.” Mental hygiene is obviously more important to her than prestige. She feels very comfortable in Nantes, “my friends live here,” and she has filled all the necessary positions in her area with old school friends, from the musicians in her band to the management of her tours. She regularly drives the few kilometers to Sainte-Nazaire “to visit my family and my sisters.”
Not even in her wildest dreams does she think of going to the place that all of France is so magically drawn to: “I’m not interested in Paris. I’d be surrounded by people who would want to tell me what to do. Maybe that 54 dancers would be chic?” She says that mental hygiene includes absolute artistic independence. On the wall next to the door hangs a discarded telephone, next to which is a sign she’s scribbled herself: “Direct line to the record industry.” Just kidding.
That is why the luxury industry, which is the driving force behind France’s state, has its eye on her. Louis Vuitton booked Zaho de Sagazan for a fashion show: “As musical accompaniment,” she stresses, “not for the catwalk!” Nicolas Ghesquière, the fashion designer of the house, outfits her for appearances such as those in Cannes or in the Tuileries. She finds such collaborations almost uncomfortable – also the fact that the hustle and bustle of the past year has made her lose weight. She points to the cold Asian noodles and shakes the reporter by the arm: “See? I do what I can!” She doesn’t want to be a puppet, a doll.
Her music sometimes plays with allusions to Baudelaire, sometimes with requests for sex, sometimes with the feelings of the “garçons”, but so far not on the level of political discourse. But here too she does what she can. Recently she dedicated a “big, really big f**k!” to the right-wing TV presenter Cyril Hanouna on Instagram – whereupon the right-wing extremist media mogul Vincent Bolloré instructed all his radio stations to remove her well-known songs from their programs. “It doesn’t matter,” she says grimly, “I’ll just write new songs.”
Where do the songs that seem to come to her actually come from? “I have no idea,” she says, but then ponders. She needs several hours to write a good chanson: “But a melody comes in a single breath. Without words, however, the melody would not appear at all. I think the two correspond. The melody appears a fraction of a second later than the word.”
»La symphonie des éclairs« will soon be re-released in an expanded version, with an emphasis on more danceable pieces such as »Hab Sex« and electronic aspects: »I felt there were too few flashes on the album,« she says, and that she now wants to add the missing power.
At the end, she faces the photographer’s lens for a while, sits down at the piano, turns knobs and puts on her typical face again – her chin raised, her gaze half lascivious, half mocking: “Self-confidence,” she says, without taking her eyes off the camera, “Self-confidence is important. I think everyone should develop that at some point. And that’s what I want to give my audience, the feeling: you’re worth something!”
She varies her poses, rests her face on her hands, not yet finished with the thought: “But too much self-confidence leads nowhere,” she says and sighs: “I grew up in the right environment, I know that. But I also always doubted myself, doubted, doubted… until I understood that without doubt, no art can be created. Self-confidence and self-doubt must be kept in check. There needs to be a balance. Does what I’m saying make any sense?”
French pop rarely overcomes the language barrier, and can only rarely be translated into German. Zaho Mélusine Le Monies de Sagazan is an artist who is unrivaled on the continent – and already meets the Germans halfway. It would be foolish to turn down her advances, and smart to listen to the French for once.
This woman is a phenomenon.
