This Saturday, in a video interview given to Mediapart, the singer, who was also one of the group's composers, looks back on this departure: “If I didn't leave, I don't know how I could have survived.” She denounces psychological violence and an environment “made of sexism and repeated humiliation”, a “control”, and “a very strong feeling of isolation” which notably led to her losing her voice.
“I was always told that I was a bad singer, that I sang out of tune, not loud enough,” says Flore Benguigui who was then surrounded by five men. She explains having taken lessons in “just about everything” and having had to “adapt all the time”: “It was always the voice that came last,” she says.
“I had lost all confidence in myself”
For fear of “getting fired”, the singer claims that she always did more “to keep her place”: “Manage social networks, make merch [NDLR : le merchandising]styling, I washed and ironed everyone’s stage outfits.” She also explains that her publications on social networks and her interventions on stage were controlled.
“I lost self-confidence in all the areas that are supposed to be part of my job,” confides Flore Benguigui. “I told myself that I didn’t deserve to be there […] that I deserved to be treated like that, to be put down.”
“Under influence”
The artist, who says he was “under the influence”, also describes “humiliating”, even “threatening” behavior on the part of certain members of the group who could “give him a lot of gifts” then “yell at him”: ” Once, one of them was physically threatening towards me, it almost went quite far. »
For the singer, it is this environment that made her lose her voice: in 2021 and for a year and a half, recorded voices are broadcast during concerts. “A huge humiliation”, for the artist who explains that she was “depressed” and trying to “save face”: “It was my fear that the public would discover that I was a gigantic deception. » However, according to her, the group “never questioned itself”: “No one thought that I had to stop. We continued the tour. »
“It was money that guided the whole creative process,” says Flore Benguigui, who, when her voice returned, participated in the production of Pulsar, “in three months, to be able to do the Coachella festival.” An album released on June 7, 2024 and in which “many texts speak, in a barely disguised way, of [s]we state”, notably the title which refers to “the dead star which still shines”. However, she slammed the door before the international tour: “I had to run away. »
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