French musician Yelle

French singer Yelle is at least as popular here as she is in France, if not more so, thanks to the colorful songs on her appropriately titled debut album Pop-Up. She first got attention by recording a diss track regarding French hip-hop artist Cuizinier, and in general she seems to wear her use of lewd vocabulary as a badge. If she's anything, she's definitely not boring... and here is our interview to prove it.

“Yelle”... how did you choose your stage name? At the beginning, it was just YEL for 'you enjoy life' but we decided to feminize it, like a mix between “yeah” and “elle” (which means “she” in french).

How is your U.S. tour going? Everything is amazing; we are really surprised by the feedback of the American audience and we are so happy about that. It’s crazy for a French band who sings in French to get out of France and to tour all around different countries like Australia, Japan, South America, etc...

What is it like to perform for American versus French audiences? Is the language barrier ever an issue? The American audience like to have fun and dance and for us it’s the most important to make people happy! The French audience is really cool but they maybe analyze a bit too much. The language is not a barrier, sometimes of course people don’t understand what I’m talking about but I try to play with my body, or just translate some words before the song.

How does your music translate from on the album to onstage? How do you modify it to accommodate your onstage performance? We are a real band, 3 on stage: GrandMarnier play drums and Tepr plays keyboards. We are musicians and it was important for us to give another vision of our music on stage. More rock, powerful.

How did you meet GrandMarnier, and when did you start working with him? I met GM at a party, because we have a common friend, and we began to work together 3 years ago.

Why make Short Dick Cuizi—how did it become Je Veux Te Voir—and what did TTC have to say about it? We were working on different stuff with GM and we just started to write this little funny diss track. It’s all about Cuizinier references. At the beginning TTC found the song funny, but when it started to be known on the web, they became upset.

What themes do you like to write about in your music? We like to talk about our life. We come from a free generation; I mean, we can talk about sex, love, death, joy, everything, light themes or not, and we like to be free in our expression.

What’s your songwriting process? There are no rules, sometimes lyrics come first, sometimes it’s music. It depends. But for the lyrics we just talk about something after a dream, or a discussion with friends, and most of the time GM begins to write alone, and we try to find good words or sentences together.

What on Pop-Up was your favorite song to work on?
Maybe Tristesse/Joie because it happened during the week when we were recording and it was one of the last songs. And this song talks about death with funny words and happy feelings and I like it.

You’re loud and really colorful to an extent that you’re practically larger than life. Is there any way in which you draw upon cartoons for inspiration? We grew up with cartoons, and maybe we are influenced by that Japanese stuff [Manga].

What about the internet? How much does it inform your work? We take a lot of time every day to check our Myspace and answer to the messages, upload new stuff. It’s an important media today and we try to use it in the best way possible. We are connected with people around the world and it’s important for us to keep that.

It definitely seems to have informed your persona, right? After all, didn’t your popularity grow with much thanks to MySpace and the internet? We come from a internet generation, so of course we can say thank you to Myspace and internet, but the most important is music. Without internet, would we be here [where we are in the music world] today too or not? I don’t know. Everything happens faster with the internet.

So to what extent is this image artifice? How much is it a version of yourself that you have created for an audience, and how close is it to what you’re actually like? Yelle is not a character but an extension of me, my explosive part! On stage I can be maybe more sexy and play with the crowd more than in life, and I like the both.

What have you read lately or particularly liked—books, comics,—? A French book called L’élégance du Hérisson, the story of a little girl with a huge IQ who met an old person with a huge IQ too and realizes she’s not alone in this world.

What’s your favorite kind of candy? Everything!! I’m a big fan of candies!!

If you were a superhero, what would you be like? Be invisible!

What is there about your character or personality or interests that would seem remarkably out of sorts with the image you put forth? I’m a shy girl, really.

Tell us a story. Any story. Once upon a time a little girl in a a little town. She wanted to be a singer like her father and one day she met a Prince Producer, very talented, with whom she started to work. They began to tour all around the world with their little French songs and with friends and... the story continues!

What’s next for you? We want to work on something new so we'll wait for time during the winter to do it and we are really excited to work on something new!

To find out more about Yelle, visit her MySpace or website.