A conversation with Zaho de Sagazan

On heading to America, her feelings about fashion, and why Jacques Brel is an inspiration

Some of us caught wind of 24-year-old Zaho de Sagazan at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival in May when she serenaded Greta Gerwig, the year’s jury president, to a rendition of David Bowie’s “Modern Love” as an homage to Frances Ha. Others, like me, discovered her a few months later at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, when she swayed in an emptied-out Tuileries Gardens, singing Edith Piaf’s Sous le Ciel de Paris acapella, accompanied by choir singers from the Académie Haendel-Hendrix.

Since, I’ve listened to her debut album on repeat and understand why she’s soared to the top so quickly— her singular style mixes 1960s Chanson and cold wave electronic, a post-punk precursor to electronic music that emerged in Europe in the 1970s. Her music draws from the lyrical power of Jacques Brel, the dancefloor poetry of Stromae, and the infectious synth pop of Kraftwerk. And that voice! She has an expressive timbre—at times husky and raw, whispering and lulling when it needs to be.

I was hardly surprised that T Magazine editors wanted to profile her for their On the Verge series because she is certainly France’s big rising star. I was delighted to have the assignment (see here) and spend a good hour chatting with her but, of course, less delighted by how much of my text and her thoughts got trimmed or trashed. Hazard of the job, c’est comme ça! But a lot is lost. I compiled parts of our conversation to run here in the hopes that you find her youthful dreaming as interesting and honest as I did.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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You’re less than two months from your first U.S. shows and speaking to U.S. media for the first time. How does that feel?

The whole thing is wild. I’ve never been to the U.S. and to think that the first time I’m going is to perform is nuts. I keep thinking about how I’ll be there, walking the streets of New York City with my best friends from Nantes, with whom I started this whole music thing. I think it’s a beautiful story, to do this with people I love so much. It’s a real family affair. I had ambition. I had faith, I had confidence in nothing but this and yet, I didn’t think I’d be going overseas to sing. 

Was there a decisive moment when you knew music was a viable path? I know you were working as a home health aide in your late teens. 

Yes, even when I was in that job, I knew. I knew at 17 I wanted to do this. I studied management for a couple of years because my mom said I had to — and she was right to insist because if I had been let loose after high school, in my apartment in Nantes, I wouldn’t have done anything. In the end, studying elements of business management was helpful since I knew I wanted to work for myself…start a label. Before music, I thought I’d become a nurse or work in a hospital. I  wanted to care for people. Music is really another way of doing that. 

But I didn’t think it was viable because I wasn’t confident. Starting from when I was 14 years old, I was completely depressed. I cried all the time. I’d come home from school and do nothing. I really wasn’t doing well.

What was the turning point? 

I discovered Tom Odell. My sister was playing his big hit Another Love one day in her room while I was in the garden and I could hear it and was instantly like, what is this wonder?! I became obsessed.  It was love at first listen. I went back to the piano, which I had learned to play as a young kid, and immediately wanted to replicate what I was hearing. I tried to find the right chords by ear. 

Also, he looked a bit like me! Now, when we make music together, I look at the videos of us and say to myself, we really are twins. I guess I saw myself a bit in him physically, but also emotionally. I knew he understood. In his music videos, like with Can’t Pretend, he’s hunched over the piano, singing with furious passion as if he’s crying, and it grabbed me. He put all his energy and sensitivity in the right place whereas I was letting it crush me. 

So that first day I went back to the piano, I played for four straight hours, though it felt like ten minutes. I thought, fuck, I’ll never be bored again. I found the thing that had to be part of my life. 

You grew up in a family of artists— is that part of what reassured you that you could make a living from making music? 

Not that I would make a living but that I’d have their support, no matter what. You have to know, I had some rather strange convictions when I was young. I wasn't thinking that I was going to become famous, but I was sure that I was going to write beautiful songs, even though I wrote very bad songs at the time and I knew it. I said to myself: This is rubbish, maybe it's a bit of a disaster. But I was listening to Barbara a lot, and I said to myself: one day, I'll get there, I don't know why, but I feel it. 

But at 15, I played the piano like plenty of other chick in the world. Why should others believe in me more than anyone else? The only way for me to succeed is to believe in it like hell. And that meant putting all my energy into it. I knew from watching my father work that art wasn’t going to just create itself, you have to work like crazy. I knew I couldn’t go into it half-heartedly if I wanted to succeed. 

So you had a kind of innate confidence. 

Only with that, oddly. I was, and still am, convinced that nobody could fall in love with me. Convinced. It's stupid, but it’s like I had signed a contract in my head that no one could fall in love with me. And at the same time, it seemed totally logical to me that 1,000 people could stand in front of me at a concert and think I was great. It’s completely paradoxical. I told myself I wouldn’t be able to seduce one person, but seduce 1,000, why not? Insane. Similarly, I'm incapable of asking for a light from a stranger in the street but I don’t mind dancing wild on stage. 

Maybe a question of inhibitions, being on stage or losing yourself in music… 

A paradox! 

Speaking of love, it’s a red thread in many of your songs. Is that the most preoccupying theme for you? 

I feel like that’s why we’re on this planet. Love of a bird singing or the love of our mothers— it's all about love. If we didn't love, we wouldn't be here to survive. In any case, for me, the difference between survival and life is that there's a love of living. That's why all the songs are about love and why love is everywhere in films and TV series. I think we're mostly just that. At least, that's all I'm made of. I feel I have a dose of love to give and a dose of love to receive. I'm a bit obsessed with it.

There’s certainly love in Tom Odell’s music. of course. But what about cold wave music? Did you find love in Kraftwerk’s music, for example?

I don't know if I found their love, but I felt an obvious love. I remember when I first listened to Kraftwerk’s synth solos, I needed to hear them again and again. They pierced my heart. I saw that as love. With cold wave music, I was hooked by the recurring synth solo, a lot of catchphrases, a lot of repetition. I love repetition. There's something a bit... You're kind of in a certain...

Hypnosis?

Hypnosis, that's it, which I find very, very pleasant, and it leads us to dream. I like it a lot. I put music on every time I walk down the street because it takes me into a dream. I can invent love stories, as if I’m in a film. Cold Wave sparked that for me. But what was missing in that music, which I made sure to include in my own, is lyrics. The power of words. A synth solo can get into your heart but it's very hard to find someone who sings well, writes well and has all the qualities of cold wave.

And that balance you’re not going to find in most pop music, either. I’ve read you’re not a fan of modern pop.

I say I'm not very inspired by pop. The truth is, I love pop, but there's a penchant in pop I don’t like. The American thing with wild light effects, backup dancers, and outfit changes, doesn’t speak to me. It’s why I don’t do anything choreographed. What speaks to me is a Jacques Brel who’s sweating like a madman at the mic with one single light shining on him; who's generous, not in the effects or the number of people around him or the technique, but from the heart.