Titled My Sangthe musician’s new album was released on November 15. On this occasion, the 32-year-old singer-songwriter spoke about the artists, works and events that make her tick.
From the artists who made him want to do his job to the women in his life, including his artistic crushes and his first sentimental disappointment, Clara Luciani took part in the interview “First Love” with Madame Figaro . An exchange during which the young mother, who has just released her third album, My Sangdelivered herself with gentleness, humility and self-deprecation.
Madame Figaro. – Who are the singers, authors, composers who made you want to do this job?
Clara Luciani. – There was Françoise Hardy naturally, and Nico who sang among others with the Velvet Underground. She was an important inspiration for me because she had a very deep voice which allowed me to assume my own voice. There were also the Beatles, and Paul McCartney in particular. They were really the three most important figures for me during my adolescence.
What are your favorite love songs?
CL.- They are always desperate love songs. Oddly enough, I find it much easier to be touched by a song about a broken heart than a love song where everything is okay. The pinnacle of the pinnacle, for me, is Don’t leave me (by Jacques Brel, Editor’s note). Nothing so beautiful has ever been written. I really like the love song of drama queen. I also really like With Time (by Léo Ferré, Editor’s note), which is also a love song in itself.
Credits: Thomas Cristiani
Who is your favorite musical duo?
CL.- I like all the songs by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. I did a cover with Alex Kapranos from Summer Wine. I find it to be an iconic and glamorous duo; their voices “match” incredibly well together.
What were your most striking artistic crushes?
CL.- I have one big problem: I never got out of my Beatles Mania phase. I still remember the day my father gave me a Beatles album for my Walkman. It turned my life upside down! I became completely obsessed with them. I was ten years old at the time, and it’s a passion that has never left me. I had another really big crush when I was 8 years old. My teacher took us to see The Young Ladies of Rochefort in the cinema and from that moment, I became a new person: I never wanted to stop singing. I wanted my life to be a musical. I would come home and talk to my mother while singing. I think it quickly exasperated her but it was truly one of the biggest artistic crushes of my life. Even today, I listen to the Beatles and Michel Legrand, through The Young Ladies of Rochefortwith the same love as when I was a little girl.
“I realize, at 32, that The young ladies of Rochefort was a film and the reality is a little different”
What is the fictional or real romance that upset you the most?
CL.- I’m going to talk again about Young ladies of Rochefortbut this musical really marked my life. She also shaped my view of love. The Garnier sisters (played by Françoise Dorléac and Catherine Deneuve, Editor’s note) are looking for the one love of their life, without which they are not complete. I was both very inspired by the aesthetics and music of Michel Legrand but also poisoned, on a sentimental level, by the conception of love conveyed by this work. At the moment, I’m trying to deconstruct it because I realize, at 32, that it was a film and that reality is a little different.
What memory do you have of your first heartbreak?
CL.- My first real heartbreak was the one that inspired all of my first solo songs. I was lucky that this sentimental disappointment unlocked this thing in me. Suddenly, I had an unstoppable subject for my first songs in French. In fact, I remember sending the record to my ex and quoting him in the acknowledgments, thanking him for breaking my heart. I felt like without that breakup, I would never have had the raw material to write these songs.
Credits: Thomas Cristiani
Who are the artists that you adored as a teenager, and whose posters did you have?
CL.- At that time I was really in my British rock phase, so I had the Beatles and the Buzzcocks. I think I had photos of Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders but also Patti Smith. And then also quite a few prints of works by Egon Schiele, because I was crazy about him. This is what my teenage bedroom looked like.
The title song from your latest album is called Everything for me . Who are the people who are “everything to you”?
CL.- There are clearly my parents, my sister and my child: they really constitute my base. But there are also obviously my friends, notably a few women who are the women in my life. And finally, the members of my team that I work with. We are really very close. And I realize in answering you that there are, too, a lot of women. Overall, there are many very strong and very inspiring female figures in my life.
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What do these female figures bring you on a daily basis?
CL.- They help me on every level. There are women in particular who have inspired me because I have seen them manage their careers and motherhood brilliantly, and I wanted to take an example from them. There are women who inspire me because they started their businesses at a very young age. They are real girl bosses. There are others who inspire me because they manage to accept their hypersensitivity, still others because I find them very free in their femininity and they make me want to align myself with them. All the women around me inspire me for different reasons.
