It’s 10am and Chris – or Christine and the Queens, AKA Héloïse Letissie – has his eyes closed through the laptop screen from his hotel room in Cannes. On each eyelid is the letter ‘M’, the ink fresh, prefer it’s just been stamped on. Then his eyelids flutter open, the Ms disappearing from view. “I got these tattoos this week,” he says, explaining how the letters stand for the names of his mother and grandmother, each of whom he lost over the past few years. “It’s a conversation starter as well,” he says, shrugging. “Which is great because I’m so shy… so, thanks mum.”

It’s true: he’s just a little shy. Once we speak he looks down often, allowing his sentences to trail off, as if his mouth is playing catch up along with his thoughts. But he’s cheeky, too, each answer peppered with wry turns of phrase and obscure winking asides. He tends to pause when considering something, pushing his loose hair back, strands gathering in his fingers, words coming out abstracted and poetic. I ponder whether he finds interviews tricky – not because he seems averse or anything – but because there’s something open and truthful about him, which could be difficult when the character of an interview requires a certain level of superficiality or digestibility for hoards of unseen readers.

We’re speaking over Zoom for 2 reasons. The primary being that he’s curated Meltdown Festival this yr, on the Southbank Centre – with a lineup that features everyone from Bat for Lashes to Django Django, serpentwithfeet and Tom Rassmussen, all playing throughout June 2023. The second being that today he releases his fourth album, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, an expansive 20-track rock opera co-produced by Mike Dean (Frank Ocean, Kid Cudi, Lana Del Ray), and featuring appearances from 070 Shake and actual Madonna, who appears twice, her half-British lilt delivering lines of exquisite spoken word (“I look into his eyes, and he into mine, my one single eye” she purrs on “Angels crying in my bed.” Later, over dazzling rock guitar, her voice reverberates: “That is the voice of the massive simulation.”)

Sadder and softer than Chris’ much earlier party-leaning output, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love is a masterclass in how you can take loss and grief and transform it into something glistening, sensual and deliciously flamboyant. From the smoky trip-hop heartbeat of “Tears Can Be So Soft” to the silky, honey-sweet falsetto of “True Love (feat. Shake 070)” and the extraordinary, slow-building synth of “To Be Honest”, it is a record built for deep, swirling emotions and soul-defining transformations. If his brilliant, squelchy anthems with Charli XCX were for the queer club dancefloor, this album is for the solitary days thereafter, alone and smoking a joint and pining for some past or future just out of reach.

Taking inspiration from Tony Kushner’s iconic play, Angels in America, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love is meant to exist throughout the same musical universe as 2022’s Redcar les adorables étoiles. Really though, these tracks glow – fully realised – on their very own. People often say that, with emotions, the one way out is thru. Paranoïa, Angels, True Love is unquestionably the “through”. Here, he delves into the record, love, fluidity and more.

How do you often spend your mornings?

Christine and the Queens: I never skip coffee. I like mornings which can be meditative. I’ve been working lots within the morning – music, dancing, writing. After which I prefer to stroll around within the afternoon and take the world in.

I’ve been listening to your album lots. ‘Tears Can Be Soft’ made me take into consideration how different tears have different chemical compositions, depending on the rationale you’re crying. Like emotional tears, they’ve more proteins in them, and release certain toxins from the body.

Christine and the Queens: That’s super interesting. I didn’t know that. I feel like [tears] are the cradle of every little thing that makes us human. Because you usually cry for something that you simply consider in, or that you simply deeply feel. So ultimately it’s very personal. An expression of your style is if you cry and why.

Do you cry often? What’s your relationship prefer to crying?

Christine and the Queens: I cry often, yeah. I’ve had impressive moments of crying for long [periods of] time. Sometimes after I was younger I’d hearken to ‘Firebird’ by Stavinsky because I wanted to cry. I don’t see it as self care exactly since it sounds weird after I say it like “headline: I see tears as self care.” However it’s a moment of reference to the self. I don’t give that to loads of people though. And I’m very emotional. So this is the reason I develop into quite isolated. I believe it gives loads of information to someone. But I cry lots, yeah – you?

I don’t cry in front of others often. It is available in phases… I’ll must take into consideration that one.

Christine and the Queens: We’ll have to watch the tears any further. People monitor their hearts, they need to monitor tears. That might be fire. That is technology that entices me. Technology must be more imbued with poetry.

Absolutely. What tends to actually make you laugh?

Christine and the Queens: Stupidity and crazy, funny things. Once I was younger I’d love gag compilation videos of things going to shit on camera. I’m very visual – I like moments that appear so absurd. I like individuals with a great sense of humour – they’re quite rare.

There are loads of serious people around.

Christine and the Queens: Yeah, or those terrified to not be taken seriously. Just let go! It’s the tip of the world!

We’re all dying. Do you end up apprehensive about not being taken seriously or is that not something you’re too concerned with?

Christine and the Queens: Actually you simply identified something quite crucial for me… I believe it was cripplingly painful after I was younger. Now it’s higher. I feel like dysphoria is linked to paranoia, like ‘no person can see me, understand me, hear me.’ Once I discovered Tommy by the Who, the song [lyrics] that struck me were ‘See Me / Feel Me / Touch Me’. That wanting to be understood. Which is why I’m becoming an increasing number of precise.

“I feel like dysphoria is linked to paranoia, like ‘no person can see me, understand me, hear me.’ Once I discovered Tommy by the Who, the song [lyrics] that struck me were ‘See Me / Feel Me / Touch Me’. That wanting to be understood. Which is why I’m becoming an increasing number of precise” – Christine and the Queens

What do you mean by more precise?

Christine and the Queens: I believe I’ve solidified throughout the past three years. Even my music has been a key to solidification. Now I get up and live my life. Once I was younger, I’d get up and the contradiction of my body was an excessive amount of for me to get through the day. Now I could be all for living the feel of life.

It’s weird that life generally is a means of solidifying your authenticity in some way, after which it’s all about conveying that to the skin world, which generally is a process in itself.

Christine and the Queens: It’s fascinating. Even to see how the world answers otherwise if you create something otherwise for yourself. But yeah, I totally agree and that’s thoroughly said – life is a solidification of your intention. I like the concept of life having meaning. Like, I’m obsessive about love itself. Art devoid of affection has no type of… I don’t know, I don’t even wish to get up.

You will have a song called ‘True Love’. What’s your definition of true love?

Christine and the Queens: I personally feel unable to vouch that I do know true love because I feel like I’m not even there yet when it comes to loving myself enough. True love appears to be this all-encompassing love that accepts every little thing. I’m not at that stage in my healing. I feel like love is an experience of discovering my wounds as well… I need to work on a record called True Love actually – it’s just a really solemn title and a bit vulgar by itself. It’s terrifying to me.

You discuss true love almost prefer it’s a spiritual entity, like in the identical way people discuss God or something like that.

Christine and the Queens: I don’t know if it’s because I’m heartbroken or hopeful.

Each? I even have to ask. What was it like working with Madonna? Was there anything that surprised you?

Christine and the Queens: It was a rock ‘n’ roll experience. I wanted to present her a personality and knew she’d slay it because she is a improbable actress. I explained the part and was very captivated with it, like ‘you’ll be able to be the all-encompassing mum, the all encompassing alter for the angels’ and he or she was like ‘I’ll do it!’ Possibly she just wanted me to stop talking. She slayed the part. At night I sent her the songs with the imprint of the lyrics. She did it her way. It was like Gina Rowlands playing for [John] Cassavetes, you already know?

Then I met her to properly talk, for dinner. She was very powerful. I actually think she’s a reincarnation of a British lord. She has that dandyism. And the piercing blue eyes. Sorry to say it, but her flesh is transcended by a charisma that is tough to pinpoint. I used to be actually listening to her and having very real conversations, but her blue gaze, I used to be attempting to pinpoint… where the fuck does she come from? She’s quite intoxicating. She’s immediate but in addition mysterious. I don’t exclude the concept that she is perhaps Metatron, the angel of presence and transformation.

She is Madonna in any case. I desired to talk concerning the song ‘Stuffed with Life’. It made me think lots concerning the ways through which loss and grief could make way for aliveness in some way, just like the contrast brings the opposite emotions out. I ponder whether that was something you’d experienced.

Christine and the Queens: Precisely there at that moment, so thanks for choosing up on my emotions. I felt very washed over by grief, but you already know if you feel such as you’ve lost lots it may possibly also solidify what you think in. It makes you weirdly earnest and there isn’t a violence anymore, there is simply what you are feeling.

There’s a dignity in that song which I like. I used to be hearing [‘Pachelbel’s Canon’] lots in America, in stations and stuff, so thought that will be an important song to [sample]. I felt just like the melody was wonderful. After which I used to be told that it’s a wedding song, to walk down the altar. And I assumed of Björk then and [the lyrics] ‘My name Isobel / Married to myself’.

It’s interesting you bring up Björk because I’ve been getting loads of Björk from this album, needless to say.

Christine and the Queens: Once I was younger people would seek advice from me about Michael Jackson, but growing up I listened to Björk lots. I used to be obsessive about Björk in highschool. Vespertine is one among my favourite albums. Through her I also discovered Tricky and Massive Attack. So she has been surfacing. Because my teenage years have been surfacing again. That’s the reality of it.

“So fluidity is acting a state of water, centred on the spirit. The spirit is revolutionary by nature, because society doesn’t understand the concept of the spirit. It only understands the concept of positioning through identity. For me, the spirit is about shedding the concept of identity. You simply keep the center” – Christine and the Queens

Sometimes I believe that if you’re a baby, and even a young person, that’s your ‘true’ self and then you definately get further away from that and must try to find that person again.

Christine and the Queens: For me, it’s linked to an enormous wound because my teenage years were the start of my dysphoria, which I attempted to push down. But I feel like my teenage years may very well be now. It’s often the case for individuals who transition later of their life. Quite a bit is coming back actually: smells, things I felt… I pushed that shit down for a very long time. Losing my mum also made me revisit all that shit.

I suppose if you’re a young person people start projecting onto you. You develop into more ‘seen’ in a way you never were before.

Christine and the Queens: I remember the socialisation at 14, and my discovery also of the confines of patriarchy on women’s bodies… it was the beginning of this fight. I remember seeing it, panicking and being like ‘I see myself in none of it. I don’t even know where to participate within the fight.’

You’ve at all times been a proponent of fluidity in all senses of the word – artistically, personally, even in gender presentation. I feel like society is afraid of fluidity. Why do you’re thinking that some find fluidity so frightening?

Christine and the Queens: I don’t know what individuals are afraid of. But human identity continues to be organised around these two poles. I’ve been having conversations with even my trans peers sometimes who were disrupted by me acting my masculinity but not for instance taking hormones. Society itself is built on this approach. Even the French language itself is polarised between the masculine and the female. There aren’t the tools to think freely even within the conceptualisation.

So fluidity is acting a state of water, centred on the spirit. The spirit is revolutionary by nature, because society doesn’t understand the concept of the spirit. It only understands the concept of positioning through identity. For me, the spirit is about shedding the concept of identity. You simply keep the center. Sorry I’m abstract but it surely’s so painful for me. I feel like we’re wasting our time, as well, attempting to define queer. Queer is just a matter. Queer is something that’s not straight.

I personally don’t really take into consideration my queerness until I’m in a situation through which I’m outside of my circle, outside in wider society.

Christine and the Queens: You develop into queer when they give the impression of being at you. Once they don’t take into consideration you, your spirit shines free within the forest along with your friends.

You express a deep frustration with language – do you’re thinking that your music and use of movement is a way of transcending that in some way?

Christine and the Queens: Yes. Thanks for choosing up on that. We create a system to grasp one another, but we’re also reducing it at the identical time since it’s imperfect. For me as an individual, my fluidity, my dignity got here from dancing. It’s taking your body out of the attention of society – be productive, eat, sleep, fuck the precise way – and then you definately develop into absurd.

You’ve spoken before concerning the pressure of being a charting artist in opposition to being an authentic one. Is that something you continue to struggle with?

Christine and the Queens: I suffer from the conversation around that. Success happened around a few of my work, but truly I don’t give it some thought. Music actually saved me from depression which is why I endured. Success is exterior to you, it changes your life, changes the people around you. After which they are saying that you simply’re not earnest because you might be successful and you’re feeling scammed.

But I’m not afraid to prove myself. You’ll get with me in the long term when you don’t get with me yet. Because in ten years, bro, I’ll have been showing you I used to be an absurdist for a very long time.

Christine and the Queens’ Meltdown runs Friday 9 June until Sunday 18 June on the Southbank Centre. Tickets can be found at southbankcentre.co.uk