Émilie Simon

I don’t think there’s any better pleasure in life than listening to a passionate French musician tell you about her career in music, which is exactly what I did when I got a chance to sit down and chat with Émilie Simon. With her newest album, Mue, having been released on the 12th of September, it was easy to tell that she was excited to talk about it, as well as her involvement with the French music festival, So Frenchy So Chic.
Beginning with her album, Émilie begins to explain that “My albums are very different from each other. Every album I make it like a little story, like a little movie, you know?” Going back to her roots, she took inspiration from the romance that Paris encompasses to drive the album’s direction.
“The album was very romantic, working with all the poetry and the melody to portray this red velvet, feminine side of Paris,” she tells me. “Mue is a love story, it’s a new beginning and it reads like an epic journey with love and falling in love and hope and disappointment and tears and lies and then the break-up. So it’s like the whole cycle of a relationship.”
It’s clear to hear the difference that this album has compared to her others, with noticeably more production spent on Mue. When asking her why she chose to go in such a different direction with this album, she simply chuckled and replied with, “My music is different, depending on what I want to say with it. How I use production in my music is the same way that a painter would use colour. And inside the album it is the same thing.”
The most outstanding song amongst the lot is her cover of ‘Wicked Game’ by Chris Isaak. Émilie revealed that she had a meeting with Isaak in which she had an opportunity to record with him, inspiring her to cover ‘Wicked Game’ for her album. “It was a really nice meeting that we had, it was really great to experience that, and I have a great memory of it. From that I just had this idea of covering ‘Wicked Game’ and it was fun, so we kept it on the album,” says Émilie on meeting the musical sensation and her reasoning behind choosing to record the cover.
With plans to tour from October to December, Émilie has plans to return to Australia in 2015 for the French music festival So Frenchy So Chic. The festival is a day-long event, taking place in both Melbourne at the Werribee Park Mansion and also in Sydney at St. John’s College. “I’ve never been before, so I’m very excited about it,” she says. Playing alongside French artists The Dø, La Femme and François & the Atlas Mountains, teamed up with French foods and champagne, it’s difficult not to get excited about it too. Tickets to the festival can be purchased through the So Frenchy So Chic website.
Mue is Émilie Simon’s sixth album, and over said albums she has changed immensely as a musician and as a person, describing her growth as “very organic. I feel like my music is really connecting with my life, and every time I have something happening in my life, you can tell in the music I write.”
When&Where: So Frenchy So Chic in the Park – January 11
By Jessica Alves