I interviewed Heloïse Letissier, better known as Christine and the Queens, prior to her opening set for Marina and the Diamonds in San Francisco last spring. I didn’t know much about Letissier as a musician and performer before our interview, but I was blown away by her combination of being able to sing (well) in both English and French, and her dancing abilities while singing. She’s just getting started in the U.S., but in France she’s already a ‘thing.’ Read the full story HERE.

Your music was, at first, sung in French. How do you translate it, while keeping the same feel, to English? Or is the feel and mood different from the original songs?

Surprisingly, it’s easy. I never change the meaning of the songs. I would rather change the rhymes. What my songs are about are strong ideas. So I have to find another way to translate them. It’s a great mind trick for me. It’s challenging.

Did you think your songs would spread to the Anglophile world as quickly as they have?

I was not writing just for myself.  I immediately wanted to go onstage and share them and say things to people. Even the early songs that were a bit more dark-black, depressed (and) weird, I immediately wanted them to exist on stage. But I never thought this would be a job at some point, or take me this far.