“I’d like people who listen to this album to say to themselves, ‘This is a real record. She didn’t lie to us. She welcomed us into her home, into her living room, we sat down and she told us who she was, without artifice and without fuss.”” This is what Clara Luciani when asked what impression she would like to leave on the listeners of My bloodher third opus, released on Friday November 15. She conceived it last year, during her nine-month pregnancy. The themes of motherhood, filiation and bonding run through the thirteen sensitive songs, with their pop and rock elegance. Just like the 32-year-old singer-songwriter herself.
20 Minutes met her on Wednesday, at the bar of L’Hôtel du Temps (Paris 9e). While there’s no doubt in our minds that a new success is on the horizon – her two previous albums.., Sainte-Victoire and Heartreleased in 2018 and 2021, are certified triple platinum, selling over 300,000 copies – she seems less serene. She confesses to feeling “a kind of pressure to do as well and not disappoint people”.
Was making this album during your pregnancy a matter of course?
It was more of a challenge to myself. It was a challenge to make an album in the time available. I’ve always taken a long time to make my albums. I was terrified of being immobilized for nine months because that had just happened to a friend who had to spend her pregnancy practically bedridden. I was dreaming of an active, creative pregnancy. I was very lucky because, in the end, my body and mind aligned and I was able to be in the studio until ten days before giving birth.
Does the physical experience of pregnancy, with all that it entails, have an impact on the way you write and make music?
There are physical, physiological upheavals that have influenced the way I write lyrics, that’s for sure. I tend to be hyper-emotional, and it’s true that with the hormonal upheavals, I was all emotion. I feel it when I listen to this record, through the lyrics, but also through my voice. I think it’s linked to the state I was in when I created it.
Did you write a lot, rewrite a lot, throw out a lot of lyrics?
I have a very strange relationship with texts, I don’t throw them away or correct them. I write everything in two hours maximum, and it stays in its basic form. For me, a successful text, in my repertoire, looks like something I could say orally. It has to be very spontaneous. If I worked too hard on the lyrics, I’d gain in perfection and poetry, but I’d lose in naturalness.
Do you really only take two hours to write a song?
It’s the fruit of work that takes place before I start writing. I mature my ideas and thoughts before putting them down on paper, and that can take years.
Does it help to be buoyed by the success of your previous tour and your first two albums?
I don’t know if I felt buoyed by that success. Somehow I felt encumbered, because with success comes the idea that it can stop. I’m not soothed by the popularity of the last album because it puts a kind of pressure on me to do as well and not disappoint people.
We understand that you wrote the song “Seule” in a moment of melancholy. Was writing it cathartic?
All songs are cathartic. Loneliness is a subject that comes up quite a lot on this record. It’s not necessarily a negative thing. I’m saying that sometimes we’re no worse off for it, as in Romance “You end up like a jerk, but serene. I think I like that, being alone. It’s funny: I fell in love with this solitude just when I was about to lose it. If there’s one thing you can’t do when you’ve just become a parent, it’s to have time to yourself.
Also on “Seule”, you sing, “Où aller quand même la famille fait mal” (“Where to go when even the family hurts”). This sounds almost subversive in an album that talks a lot about the importance of family ties, or more generally, in a society where the family is seen as a protective cocoon…
On this album, I wanted to be completely honest. I’ve always wanted to show things as they are. There are certain subjects that suffer from the Instagrammable image we maintain. I don’t like this thing where everything is smooth, everything is pink, everything has to be photographable. There are rough edges and complexity everywhere. That’s the case with pregnancy, motherhood and the family. I don’t want to pretend that everything is rosy all the time. I really wanted this pregnancy. When it arrived, it was fabulous, but there were plenty of moments when I didn’t feel good physically, when I found it difficult. Motherhood is the same. It’s the greatest gift, the most beautiful adventure of my life, but obviously the post-partum period is very complicated. The same goes for the family. Of course, it’s my safe placewhere I feel most comfortable. But at the same time, because I love them more than anything, the slightest scratch my loved ones can give me causes me a lot of pain.
So it’s important for you to get your message across?
It’s very important because we’re perpetuating a lie that does a lot of harm. I think there are a lot of moms out there who find themselves with their baby and wonder, “Am I normal if I’m sad?” Listen to the podcast Bliss did me a lot of good. Women talk about how they didn’t like being pregnant. It’s good to hear that. Pregnancy is also a time of introspection, a time of upheaval. Biologically, a woman is in a hormonal upheaval. It’s a very intense time.
So you’ve listened to this podcast. Have there been any books or films that have also nourished you?
Yes, I need to find the name of the author… (She searches on her smartphone) It’s a book called New Mother by Cécile Doherty-Bigara. Fabulous. All new moms should read it, it’s so liberating. At the moment, I’m reading Mona Chollet’s essay on guilt [Résister à la culpabilité] and that’s great too. When we go to the maternity ward, they should make us a little bag with some essential reading. If we all went home with these books, we’d breathe a little easier. And I’d really like this album to end up in that little bag, because I think it says a lot about the state you can be in at that moment in your life. Particularly the song Courage. I think it will resonate with many new mothers.
“Courage”, “Allez”… We find this notion of unifying anthems, enjoining action, like “Respire encore” on your previous album. Did you expect that song to become what it did?
No, just as I didn’t expect anything from La Grenade. You never expect a song to work or not to work, and that shouldn’t be what inspires you to create a song. When I wrote La Grenadeit wasn’t easy. I was a young woman of 23 in a world where, when you talked about feminism, people rolled their eyes and sighed. The reception of this piece, at the very beginning, before #MeToobefore the Weinstein affairIt had nothing to do with that. It was: “What is she saying and why is she wasting her time singing this?” All of a sudden, the word got out and the song began to resonate. Breathe againIt’s the same thing. It took on a special meaning because it came out, I think, the day before it was no longer compulsory to wear a mask… I don’t think that’s going to happen again with this record, it’s less societal.
In today’s gloomy context, “Allez” may resonate in a certain way…
You’re right. It can take on that meaning. But this song sounds like something I used to sing to myself when I was a very young woman trying to make music and it wasn’t working. I used to repeat these mantras of self-persuasion. I’d tell myself it would be all right.
Is there a misunderstanding about you that exasperates you?
I don’t know, because I don’t know what people think of me. I think I’m too sensitive to take a close interest in the matter. On the other hand, what terrifies me is the idea that people might think I’m a snob. That’s really what I can’t stand in people, Parisianism, elitism… It’s not like me at all. I couldn’t stand to look pretentious. I hope that’s not the case.
Is being the godmother of “Star Academy” this season on TF1 a way of proving that you’re not into snobbery?
It sounds like me. It’s silly when you say it like that, but I’ve always had a desire to look after people younger than myself. It’s also what motivated my desire to become a mother as soon as possible in my life, and what led me to get involved with theUnicef. This taste for care and support undoubtedly comes from my mother, who is a care assistant and who passed on these values to me, which are very strong in her family. This idea of accompanying young artists, of giving them advice that I would have liked to have received when I started this profession, at the age of 19, made a lot of sense to me. It was the right time to do it. I’m about ten years different from the “Star Academy” students. I tell them a lot about myself, my experiences, my faux pas and so on. What surprised me was that I didn’t expect to learn so much from them.
What do you mean by that?
I’m very uncomfortable on stage, for example. Doing TV shows is really hard for me. They do it so naturally that they carry me a lot. I feel dizzy. During the primes, they all ride on elevated machines. It was thanks to one of the staracademycians, Ebony, that I managed to do the same during a duet. She was so cute, she took my hand…
You were very involved during the week devoted to you on the show. Did you become attached to these students?
Yes, even more than I thought. I’m not one to do things by halves. I live everything quite intensely and I take this role seriously. If I’m going to do it, I might as well do it well. I’m 1,000% behind them.