Sebastien Tellier

August 5th, 2009

THERE’S SOME BIG THEORY BEHIND SEBASTIEN TELLIER’S ODES TO SEX
Words Paula Ayer Image Eduardo Hernandez Vaca

You might be forgiven for having certain preconceptions about Sébastien Tellier. The French singer and multi-instrumentalist first attracted attention with his gorgeous piano and synth-string masterpiece “La Ritournelle,” which had a series of successful remixes and even turned up on the soundtrack of Gossip Girl. But ever since the release of Tellier’s third album, Sexuality, his sleek electronic pop has been almost overshadowed by his reputation as a modern Serge Gainsbourg. Maybe that’s what happens when you create a themed album about sex that includes your girlfriend’s actual bedroom moans. Or when your Dionysian onstage behaviour involves swilling champagne, mounting pianos, and extolling bisexuality. Or maybe it’s that Spinal Tap-worthy album cover, which features the artist perched on a tiny horse atop the breast of a naked, reclining woman.

The image of Sébastien Tellier: Gallic libertine is only reinforced upon arriving to interview the musician and being escorted onto his leather-seated tour bus to interrupt him, wearing dark sunglasses, having a very rockstar-like afternoon nap. So it’s something of a surprise to meet Sébastien Tellier: serious artist, philosopher, and romantic.

For one thing, there’s a pretty high concept behind all that raunch. “When I was a child, my parents listened to a lot of progressive rock, bands like Pink Floyd and King Crimson,” he explains, lighting the first of many cigarettes. “So concept albums are my natural point of view. I need a kind of story through the album.” He chooses his stories, he says, by searching for what he calls the “master of puppets,” the force that drives human behaviour. “At the beginning of my career, the master of puppets was family. After that I changed my mind and it was politics,” he says, describing his first two albums, 2001’s L’incroyable Vérité and 2005’s Politics. “And now I changed my mind again, and the master of puppets is sex.” So will he find a new master in time for the next album? “It’s really hard because sex is the story of humanity; life comes from desire, so it’s difficult to find a better subject, because nothing is more important than life.”

So what of that memorable album cover? “I tried to say with the cover, sex is une aventure,” he says, describing himself as a Don Quixote figure. “The body of the woman is the landscape and with my little horse I try to discover, what is sex and what does it mean?”

Tellier made headlines around the world in 2008 when his song “Divine,” which happens to be sung in English, was selected to represent France in the Eurovision Song Contest, creating a national controversy. “It’s just a little song,” he says, explaining that he sings in any language that suits his melody (including French and Italian). “That would be wonderful if just one song could kill the French culture, I would be very proud of that! But it’s not true.” After receiving a pleading letter from the government, Tellier agreed to add some lyrics in French. You might expect some lingering bitterness, but he couldn’t have been more delighted with the attention. “It’s wonderful, because it was a kind of huge commercial. In France, the news on TV, all the papers, for two weeks they talked about it every day. They talked about me in Parliament. So it was a great period of my life.”

For Tellier, it seems, anything that gets him attention is a good thing. But what he really wants is for people to enjoy his music – and unsurprisingly, this master of mood has instructions for the ideal way to do so. “First you have to be in love – if you are, you are lucky. You have to wait for the beginning of the night, then open a bottle of champagne, and then you press play – and that will be a great moment, I promise.”