The French pop star has endured the death of his mother, record industry resistance and a backlash after adopting male pronouns. In an emotional interview, he talks about the struggle to understand himself and the music he makes. T here are some musicians who seem made for, and by, their work, who make music that lives through them, from their toes to the tip of their quivering quiff.
I interviewed him on stage in London in for the release of his second album and the outpouring of love from the young, mostly queer audience was palpable and moving. That was when he was Chris, a woman playing with masculine tropes, who wondered about switching between female and neutral pronouns. About the same time, he started calling himself Redcar, or Red, rather than Chris.
The album is sung mostly in French, with a splashy, open s sound, hooks galore and much musing on love and sex. I love it. I arrive early, while everyone is at lunch, say hi and wait in a nearby studio. The photo session has gone well, all seems fine. But when I step out into a corridor to make a phone call, I witness a small scene. A little way away, I see Redcar talking to someone very intently. Is one of them crying? The feeling of emotional trouble continues when, a few minutes later, we sit down in a cafe to chat.
Redcar perches on a sofa, left leg stretched out to the side, in wide-shouldered jacket, pinstripe trousers, with slicked-back hair and strange-toed shoes. A tattoo peeks above a white shirt. One hand wears a red glove. The look is confident and masculine, but Red has an exceptionally expressive face and his expression is less certain.
How is he? And I feel crazy, now, and just broken. Mostly, he is wrung out from creating and protecting his music. He set himself a challenge of making a song a day and he succeeded there are 13 tracks. This process, he says, was intense but joyous, a firework explosion after a very difficult time. It was just this unfolding. Very chaotic. In came lockdown; just before that, in February of that year, Christine and the Queens released a five-song EP, La Vita Nuova, with lavish accompanying video, which saw him on a Parisian roof, dancing inside with a troupe, dashing down stairs in a long white wedding dress and turning vampire on singer Caroline Polachek.
