she lives in a suitcase. she loves chet baker. she writes magical songs. she is the best french pop girl du jour. (gail + dawn interviewed her in—where else?—noisy café gitane in june)
chickfactor: what are you doing in new york?
keren ann: I like to come every now and then. my childhood friend lives here and it's impossible not to love new york—sometimes it's just too much and you have to get away. I thought it would be nice to come here for a while. usually I just come and go back to paris but this time I shipped some equipment and I can work a little and record. I'm based in paris but I live more in my suitcases than in a home. I guess now new york is where I open them.
cf: did you always want to be a singer?
keren: of course I wanted to sing stuff. by the way the reason I keep my glasses on is because I was at the hospital all night and didn't sleep and my eyes are very red. I'm not being a rock star. my father bought me a nylon guitar—the kind you buy in toy shops—when I was 9. I was really obsessed by songwriting. I didn't know it was songwriting at the time, I just knew it was beautiful melodies, beautiful stories. that was the attachment, rather than the singing. it takes time to get used to the voice. even if you write songs, other people are always singers. it's really hard to see yourself as a singer. it comes a lot later when suddenly people start telling you, "oh, you have your sound." but then you still look for it. I went through all these phases, when I was 18 I had a band with friends and I was trying to stop screaming. it never worked out. I always hated my voice. the only time it worked out was when it sounded the same way it sounds at home when I play and sing. it took me time to get there.
cf: were you in a metal or punk band?
keren: oh, all of those. we played at places like... here we would call it a biker pub but in france it's not even that. once the drummer david who still plays with me almost got in a fight with some guy who wanted to go on stage with us and dance and jump around. we were looking for a sound. you always want to be in a band, especially when you're 18 and you want to try stuff and you want to scream. and then you come home and light the candle and you have your guitar and you just sing folksongs and that's when you're happy and it sounds right but it stays in your room. the music you make is the music you always come back to. you go out of your way to make it bigger, to make it more beautiful, but you don't go out of your way to make it different from who you are. songwriting is just something that comes out naturally. it was a big mistake for me to try and scream but I had to go through that.
cf: do you remember the first song you wrote?
keren: not with the title but I remember the theme. it was probably very tragic and immature and dramatic like all first songs you write. I still write a lot—we're all stuck in those grown-up bodies. I don't know who said that "adults are children with responsibilities" but I believe that. today I can still write teenage songs but with a way of not making it dramatic. at the time it was very dramatic and tragic but I think everybody writes songs about death and killing because all you think about when you're a teenager is suicide.
cf: did you have brothers and sisters?
keren: a sister and a brother.
cf: are they musical?
keren: not at all. but they're all listeners. I grew up with françoise hardy on the record player. my father listened to frank sinatra, bob marley. my older sister brother listened to the beatles and the rolling stones. I was always very attached to french chansons and also the beatles of course. then I developed my own taste and I bought ladies of the canyon by joni mitchell. you start developing a taste and then you hear chet baker and your whole world changes. and you hear lee hazlewood and your whole world changes. each time you discover someone you just want to know everything he's done. what's nice is that you get to be disappointed by things that five years later will astonish you. that's the beauty of artists like that. they have different parts in their writing or in singing or in choices you'll either like or not. so I guess it was musical surroundings brought me into music rather than instruments or playing.
cf: what's your favorite serge song?
keren: it would be a mixture of "ballad de melodie nelson" or "jane b". I'm crazy about all his periods except maybe I like the reggae albums less, except "sorry angel" is a very, very beautiful song. the other songs on the album I like less. "je t'aime...moi non plus" was played in holland on radio—it was shocking everywhere else but in holland they would just play it, without even understanding what it was about. the sound of it was so—the sound of the drums, the sound of the bass—you don't realize it's that, you just know it's something else. for you this is french. but it's actually french artists inspired by british sounds. it's funny but all his work...there's always a sound to what he's done. what he wanted to hear was very tasteful.
cf: did you ever meet him? I don't know how old you are but you look about 22.
keren: I'm 30. thank you though.
cf: have you met jane?
keren: yes, I've met jane. she had a special tv show once where she was singing his songs and she invited me to sing "babe alone in babylon" with her. she's a fantastic lady. a real english rose.
cf: how famous are you in paris?
keren: depends what you call fame. nobody talks to me in the street. people come up and say nice words. there is a buzz. people look but it's not fame in terms of hysteria. it's more—I am lucky enough to release a record and know that a certain amount of people will buy it. which will allow me record a new one. I've been recording one record a year plus my band side project. I'm very privileged because I know that if I play in certain places they will be filled. if I get a project out it will be bought. so it's not many people but it's enough people to let me live off music and permit me to make more.
cf: are you still writing songs with benjamin biolay?
keren: no, not for a long time. we wrote a lot together. we wrote together, he wrote with other people, I wrote with other people but for some reason, which is a good thing, what we've done together saw a lot of lights and what we've done solo or with other people saw less lights so people just thought we spent 24 hours a day in a room writing songs. but the thing is we wrote many many songs and then they were released, some of them I even release today for projects that took time. after writing for a long time, either you want to kill each other or you're writing the same song over and over or you're being intelligent and you're like, ok, it has to stop.
cf: how did you two meet?
keren: we met through friends for a certain project. a friend of mine who's a violin player. she plays on my records. she was in a band. they needed someone to write their songs. then they wanted us to play with them. they contacted him and they contacted me and we met when we were contacted by this band. and we ended up working together on henri salvador's solo album, on my solo album, on his solo album.
cf: who else have you written with?
keren: I usually write on my own. until I hate the songs and I need someone to come in. today I can write many songs and have them, from the first note until the recording is started. but when you write alone many many times you can't stand things anymore. you need someone to come in to make you know that this song is good, this song is nice, this song suits you. basically on my solo stuff I didn't let anyone in besides benjamin because we have the same way of working. I've been writing more songs with the violinist. and that girl sophie hunter. and I've been contacted by guy chambers who works with robbie williams because he wanted to do a french project based on themes of the 70s with an english actress. I only came in to write the script and the songs and the lyrics which is something I usually don't do but it was a great challenge to do with her because she really interprets. I've done stuff with etienne de crecy. because it worked people have contacted us just to have one song, hoping for the song to be the single.
cf: I was interested in how you were saying how you come to new york and you feel you need a break and you have to go back. what is it about new york that's different from paris?
keren: let me tell you the good things in new york compared to paris, then I can trash it up. there's a lot to trash up in both. normally in new york if you need to have information, it's either yes or no, but at least you know. in paris, it's "we'll see." second time, "we'll see." and it can last forever. on the other side new york is overwhelming. there's too much of everything. you don't know how to situate what you want and what you don't want anymore. in paris you can have noise and crowds outside but you can find so much calm in certain streets and certain areas. probably paris is constructed on so much history, ambiguously between kindness and understanding and hate and snobbism. but that is very comfortable to live in because you can live in paris, and it's not because people are cold, people just leave you alone. for people who are solitary it's very comfortable. new york is a city where you're never alone, but you've never been lonelier. which is also good. but it's very subjective. for every person it's different. this is the way new york is for me and paris is for me. I really love both. new york is not my second, but my third or fourth city. it would be paris, I spend a lot of time in brussels, and reykjavik.
cf: how did you end up on metro blue, a subsidiary of blue note? you're not a jazz musician, you're getting compared with nick drake. how do they fit you in?
keren: I don't know. they decided to release me on metro blue, but I wanted to. I was so grateful they wanted to release it. I don't know how they'll fit it in. it's very hard not to love nick drake. I realize I never say his name in interviews because it's also very obvious for me to have been touched by his work. the songs I like the most are the songs that were rereleased in time of no reply.
cf: there's a "new" single out. "I was made to love magic."
keren: I covered it.
cf: apparently he wasn't keen on the original string arrangement.
keren: I didn't know it was going to be released. I love this song, it's fantastic.
cf: are there a lot of good french artists we don't know about?
keren: today? no. I'm privileged because there've been great artists behind me. today there are many people who write songs but there hasn't been a record I've been hearing over and over. it's funny because I'm very much related to the new generation of french chanson and it's funny because I feel, even if I have a lot of french chanson inspiration in my music, the french artists that inspired me were looking for british sounds and working in english studios. air's albums I like.
cf: who is this icelandic dude on your record?
keren: bardi johannsson, he is the leader of bang gang. he featured on the last song on my record and I featured on one of his songs and together we have a band with animation, it's called lady and bird. we just found out there is a terrible techno band from poland called ladybird written almost the same so we're really scared. there is some on my website.
cf: if you could write an album for any actress to sing, who would you pick?
keren: the one I've written for sophie hunter is the one I would pick. I don't know, I never think about projects, they just come to me.
cf: what kind of films do you like?
keren: very eclectic. hitchcock, tim burton, I can love hollywood disasters, I'm a big documentary fan, even if I fall asleep. I love a subjective voice over images.
cf: what do you do when you're not doing music?
keren: that hardly ever happens. I'm not doing music onstage, I'm doing music in the studio. but I like to draw. like the lady and bird characters. it's something to do that keeps me alive which is not music. I've never been a student so I love to read and do things that students do.
cf: the stories and characters that you have, are these characters you've had your whole life or are you constantly inventing new ones?
keren: they are ones that have been there for a long time. some since teenage. sometimes new ones come in and disappear. it depends where I'm at. sometimes I have one of those short stories published in french magazines. I think it's more mine. many people can be good at many things. a person can take fantastic photos on weekends, and another person can take fantastic photos all year long. that doesn't mean the one who's doing it on weekends isn't as good, it just means he isn't doing it all the time. so that's for me the difference between activities that you do full time and not full time. I'm not a drawer and I'm not a writer for now because I don't do it full time.
cf: do you have a melody stuck in your head right now?
keren: I've had the same song stuck in my head for four years. it always comes back. it's not every day. "I fall in love too easily" by chet baker. every time I hear a story or I go out of the cinema or something that has to do with being back, being okay, I have this song in my head.
cf: is it your favorite?
keren: no, I have many: "it's always you," I like "imagination." I like many, but this one has the phrase "I fall in love too terribly hard for love to ever last" and it suits me, I guess it suits everybody, it's reality.
cf: do you ever dream about melodies?
keren: yeah, you must have. it's scary. it happens. there's no way to explain. you wake up and you have a melody. you have to fix the structure. when it happens, you have the feeling that you've stolen it from somewhere and it's not yours. you put it aside. it comes back and comes back. you have to record it to move on. when you record it, you realize it is in some way your song.
cf: have you ever met françoise hardy?
keren: we have dinner every other wednesday. we write each other. I had the privilege of meeting her after my first record was released. it was a dinner that was supposed to be official but we tried to make unofficial and we talked about everything—you know when you've heard someone so much. she's way too generous. we talk about love, books, rarely about songs. I'm very privileged because she became a friend and she's an extremely intelligent woman who gives a lot of good advice—not about music, just about life. she's very funny. I'm very privileged to get to know her.
cf: yeah, and we're jealous! thanks keren.
kerenann.com
