Your first album, released in 2008, was called Ersatz, and this one, Imposteur… Are we talking about it?
Julien Doré (Laughs) I realized that recently. For Ersatzthere was the idea of a somewhat false reproduction, with, it's true, a bit of devaluation in relation to myself. For Impostorit starts from a moment when I was searching on the Internet, I typed my name and “2007”, and I came across press articles, including one with the title: “Julien Doré: genius or imposter? » And clearly, he was fucking me. (Laughs) So I found thatImpostorit was still a very classy name! Especially since, a few days before, I was in the studio with Sharon Stone and Francis Cabrel. I had in mind this artistic material, which is – not solid, that would be pretentious – beautiful, for me. True. Powerful. Distancing with this name took on real meaning for me at that moment.
Why release this project with so many references to your beginnings, now, without a particular anniversary?
I have had it in mind for my fifteen years of career. When I'm at home, when I'm not writing, I'm not playing my songs. I take the chords from someone else's song and have fun. I save these fragments on my phone. The list grew longer, and I thought it would be nice to do something with it. I finished the album tour Aimee (2022), a record on which I pushed the writing and composition. It was about transmission, and I was in a cycle where I became a father, then I lost my mother, my grandmother. I had said so many things in these songs. I knew that when it came time to start writing again, it wouldn’t work. So, at the end of the tour, I'm starting this cover album project. It was done several times. The first work session went very well. But the second, not at all. I was sure I was doing something stupid. We started writing new songs. In a new, crazy, incredible direction. This will be the sequel, my next album. I think I needed to awaken something in me, to better start again on this project. I knew, in that moment, that it was the right time, and that I was doing it for the right reasons.
“I remember very well the recording of Les Yeux de la mama“
Which ones?
Stir, one last time, a nostalgia that does me good. Remember New Starfrom this chance, this door which opens a little, I enter, I am asked to leave, I re-enter and I stay without really knowing why. Seventeen years later, here I am. Imposter, it's a way of poeticizing these memories, it's also telling the story of a fucking birth! It is thanks to New Starall that. I loved this cocoon where I was allowed to be who I am, at a time in my life when I was convinced of not being loved.
The deaths of your mother, your grandmother, the birth of your son… Was it easier to approach these subjects with other people's songs?
For my mother, at least, yes. I remember very well the recording of Mama's eyesby Kendji. After a long search, I found a voice message from her. I put it in the opening. I think that allowed me to make this song my own. But I don't think that the choice of an album of covers corresponded to a questioning, that of knowing how to verbalize or not the fact of having become a father, of having lost my grandmother and my mother…
Julien Doré's interview can be read in full in the new magazine Télé 7 Jours. Available on newsstands from this Monday, November 4.
