“Festivals are happy places, and you don’t really want to enjoy them on your own.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love people who go on stage and blossom like a weird flower.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Fashion is a way to transform yourself. By choosing your own silhouette and shape, you can constantly change who you are.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When you dance, you own everything you have. You are really in your own body. You do it with your muscles and your bones and your weight and your height – it’s how to love yourself by moving.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Dancing, for me, is like a second language. It’s the best way for me to get out of my shell and be expressive in a very personal way.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I always wanted to be Romeo, not Juliet. Romeo is a much cooler way to be – Juliet’s just up in a balcony, waiting.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’ve always really been interested in observing people’s postures, the way they speak with their hands, the way they communicate things with their body language.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Male rock stars are sexy because they desire you first. I want to be like that.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love trying to match a really hard expectation.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m a huge pop music lover. I do love the immediacy, the organic fever that happens when a pop track is so infectious.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Tapping into a more masculine, macho culture, I got in touch with my femininity, but differently. Macho culture is also pride of the body and showing it off – a relationship to theatricality, to construction. It’s about owning your narrative again.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Before I created Christine, I was actually really girly. Maybe I was trying to hide something, but I was trying too hard to be a girl, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was afraid of being myself.”
― Christine and the Queens
“My words are my sword.”
― Christine and the Queens
“The way I dress definitely helps me embody and actually change my way of behaving and feel more confident.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I have an obsession with haters: the great mess of the Internet expressing itself. I love to type my name on Twitter and read everything. It’s always enlightening to see what they hate about you: I’m not pretty enough to be on stage, or my music doesn’t make any sense. It feels good to read that, like I’m heading in the right direction!”
― Christine and the Queens
“The core of all the music I love is a good bass line and a good rhythm.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I don’t remember my 20s as a good place.”
― Christine and the Queens
“There are lots of ways to be a feminist. Beyonce, for example, is a beautiful example of feminine sensuality and is still really powerful. My character and my inner essence is more like an awkward 15-year-old boy, like a teenager backstage, like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ That’s what I’m trying to channel.”
― Christine and the Queens
“For me, the male gaze is oppressive. And I hope if we are building a female gaze that it’s inclusive, and it’s about pure desire and not how I want people to look in order for them to be desired by me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Queer is about intense questioning that can’t be made nice and glossy.”
― Christine and the Queens
“For some people, it’s impossible to escape binaries.”
― Christine and the Queens
“It’s always odd to me when people say, ‘Where does Heloise finish and Chris start?’ It’s the same thing. I’m just putting a theatrical form to my expression.”
― Christine and the Queens
“My whole life is queer.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m kind of resistant to being told no, not being wanted. It fills me with energy.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Because I’m experimenting so much with gender-bending and listening to everything that happens to me in terms of genderless energies, I have a hard time finding partners that can match me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’ve always been the one who is more enthusiastic about Christmas than my family. I regress to a child state, chanting carols.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m kind of an obsessive person, and touring is repetitive in the best way.”
― Christine and the Queens
“The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When the image that I built around the first album was crumbling, it was scary: the risk pays off, but the resonances of that risk are not always easy to deal with.”
― Christine and the Queens
“The gender question has always obsessed me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“In real life, I feel tiny and quite embarrassed all the time. But when people come up to me in France and want to talk to Christine, it’s okay. It’s cool. Because they’re really talking about themselves, their own Christines.”
― Christine and the Queens
“That’s part of what made me interested in theater as a kid. It made it acceptable to be a man for an hour onstage.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I invented Christine as a survival technique. I was inspired by the idea that everyone could have a Christine inside to wake.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I wanted ‘Comme si’ to immediately indicate that something changed in my life, mainly because I became the hero of my own desires instead of just dreaming about them.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When you write, you don’t really think of how honest you are being – it’s only when you record that you understand how much of yourself you’re giving.”
― Christine and the Queens
“No matter what you eventually become – free, empowered – the lingering feeling of ‘once an outsider, always an outsider’ is very vivid for me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I have Googled so many things related to possible diseases, and it’s always ridiculous. Like, ‘My toe is hurting. Do I have cancer?’ ‘I have a scratch in my eye. Am I going to die soon?’ ‘Is eating a soup going to make me die?’”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love funny women.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m terrified of dying because of everything being too unfinished. I would be happy being a ghost.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I have to take phone calls, I start to sweat and panic. Being on the phone is so weird – hearing a voice without seeing the face so you can’t really know the intention behind the voice.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’ve always been obsessed with being on stage and putting shows together.”
― Christine and the Queens
“That’s pretty much how I feel on stage, like I can let go of all kinds of baggage, or even disappear and change outfits. I want to remind people that they can grant themselves the license to do the same.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Typically, in France, someone in my position should keep their mouth shut. I’m an entertainer, operating in the realm of pop, and it’s often looked down upon for a pop artist to take a stand, to have convictions or opinions. But I don’t think the two are incompatible or mutually exclusive.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I think I used Christine, who is my stage character, as an excuse to finally be myself, as if I needed to say, ‘Oh this character is going to be the woman I wanted to be.’”
― Christine and the Queens
“I always knew I wanted to be a woman in men’s clothing because I just feel good like that. I feel like I’m taking a different space: I move differently; I’m more at ease.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Every masculine hero narrative I could find I wanted to steal for myself and twist to my size.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I remember writing ‘5 Dollars’ out of intense listening sessions of Bruce Springsteen. I don’t know if it’s obvious, but I was obsessed with how limpid Bruce Springsteen’s melodies are: It’s such a great way to do storytelling and to still be melodic and catchy.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Christine and the Queens is born out of a particular moment in my life where I was quite low.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I think ‘Chris’ is way more about that, about living desire as a force of chaos and about reveling in that chaos.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I enjoy this confusion. Heloise? Christine? Chris? Maybe I will be called C at some point.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love the idea of constantly altering yourself.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, ‘I will be a teacher.’ And they were looking at me like, ‘Girl… you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.’ So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I broke up with my first girlfriend because I was out of love. I was crushing so hard on her for a whole year, and I finally I got to be with her, and the interest vanished. I’m a terrible person. I was 17, and she was in my class.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I use Twitter to be my best self: fun, dateable. I don’t get paranoid with Twitter, only in real life. I write so I feel comfortable, not speaking.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I trust people who look like animals.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Basically, when I like a song, I have to dance.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I know that a song is working when I can properly dance on it.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I thought of Christine at first, I was really angry with everything that was given to me as a young girl.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m going to redefine what it means to be sexy, and it’s going to be creepy as hell. Because I could never do the ‘sexy’ way of being sexy.”
― Christine and the Queens
“The first album was a coming-of-age album – I don’t like the phrase, but when you listen to it, you can tell I was having a hard time, that I wasn’t socially relating to people.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’ve experienced being properly lost in my desires, and it’s really influenced my writing.”
― Christine and the Queens
“There’s a lack of ambition in politics in terms of what we expect from the government, what it means to have a state.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m often lost in my dreams.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I was young, I would write all the time. Novels, plays, and poems. It’s like a disease – my life is filled with fantasies, and I have to write them all down.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Christine was me wanting to break free. I was tired of being prissy and shrinking and apologising all of the time, so I created a character that could be daring for me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“For me, everything is a performance.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I wish I could change bodies and destinies.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m kind of obsessed with Bruce Springsteen – the T-shirt and jeans look for me is appealing. Prince was great as well. He designed all of his outfits himself and looked exactly how he wanted to look. He was in complete control of his image.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m not trying to brag, but if I did expose my life, it would be a good YouTube series.”
― Christine and the Queens
“No one can escape politics. We are all in it. Even if we shy away from it, I just decide to embrace it. And I try to be an ally for other fights.”
― Christine and the Queens
“The character I’ve created, Christine, is mainly the first attempt for me to escape all the secret injunctions we have as girls all the time. Like, be pretty but be polite. Don’t take too much space. All those things that didn’t mean anything to me. I just decided to turn them around with my character.”
― Christine and the Queens
“If I want to say I’m a man for three minutes, then be it: I’m a man for three minutes.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m just drawn to hands.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Gendered performance is just constant theater.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I think, from the beginning, I was healed and inspired by queer culture, and Christine and the Queens, as an idea from the beginning, is queer because it questions the norm.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love when I dive into lyrics that give me human complexity and intricate narrative.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Most people know Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Histoire de Melody Nelson’ album, but what’s interesting is that in the early ’90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don’t really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it’s the best.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Sometimes when I travel, I like to find things that relate to where I am.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love Lou Reed because his voice sounds like your inner conscience.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I read a book, it’s Lou Reed’s voice narrating it.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I see theatre everywhere, actually. We’re all kind of performing a version of ourselves every morning by choosing the clothes and how we appear – but the stage is so emphasising that I really feel comfortable in it.”
― Christine and the Queens
“You have to work with your body when you dance; you can’t shy away from your physicality. For me, it’s really linked to an incandescent way of accepting yourself and projecting. The dancing was at the core from the beginning.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I invented ‘Christine’ as a survival technique to deal with many things. I felt it would save me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I started to write music, I desperately wanted to relate to people. But when I became famous, I could relate less. I thought, ‘Oh, am I trapped in my own creation?’ I was really lonely.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Sometimes, in my adult life, I have memories of when I was young and really scared of being too close to people.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m in love with artists that are really difficult to cover or to copy. You can only try to copy them, but you will never succeed because it’s intertwined with really personal references and really personal ways to exist on stage. They are really strong individuals, and are writing their own songs and know where they want to go.”
― Christine and the Queens
“It’s the strong will of an artist that really inspires me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love sensual women like Beyonce who are very empowering and sexy at the same time, but if it’s not what you want to do then you have to say no.”
― Christine and the Queens
“In theater, what I loved were wordless plays and working in silence.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I’m not a pop star. I don’t feel like one. I’m always joking that I’m actually an eight-year-old boy dreaming about being a pop star.”
― Christine and the Queens
“On stage, I feel like I’m invincible, like nothing bad can happen. I can be myself. I feel like I shrink when I’m off stage.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I remember growing up and feeling all the time not pretty enough, too rude, too loud, taking too much space because precisely I wanted to maybe be bossy and loud and unapologetic and not really smooth all the time, and those were not really qualities that were valued for me.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Christine, as a stage character, is just a way for me to be more daring, to be more out of the box, to be stronger and to use everything that could weigh me down like a fuel, like an energy.”
― Christine and the Queens
“I love people that are question marks. I love people that don’t have answers and are just trying to cope with it. I love people that just don’t tick boxes. There is a grace in them I can’t really find elsewhere.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Every time I think about a girl to motivate me, I think about Grimes. She’s one of my heroes.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Grimes is the extreme version of doing everything yourself. I think this is impressive, because she is fiddling with things I couldn’t fiddle with, all the technical stuff. I know what I want to do, but I wouldn’t do it all my own, I would go crazy. This is insanely hard, to do an album by yourself. But I admire her for that.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Music is contagious and everywhere and democratic, and that’s what drew me in. I was interested in acting and being a director, but one of the things that bored me about theatre was that it was not accessible to everyone.”
― Christine and the Queens
“Christine and the Queens is about not being safe.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I take risks, I win. When I do the safe thing, it’s a disaster.”
― Christine and the Queens
“When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn’t very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.”
― Christine and the Queens
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