The French Queer Artists You Need to Listen To

By Laurine Payet, Music Journalist

The month of July is the month of travel at myGwork. While borders are reopening and discovering new countries is finally getting easier, it is still important to stay safe. We found the best way to make you travel without taking any risks: music. For the first edition, we picked our favourite tracks of queer artists from France and French-speaking countries. From mainstream pop to sad singer-songwriter sounds, the French have a lot to offer when it comes to queer music. 

Mathilde Gerner, also known as Hoshi, is one of the main French queer icons. After releasing her debut album ‘Il suffit d’y croire’ in 2018, Hoshi’s career florished. She however got forced to come out shortly after, when the magazine Paris Match mentioned her homosexuality, something she had never made public and hadn’t planned to. She since that has been open, proud and unapologetic about it. She is now open to explore her queerness through her songwriting. Our current favorite pick is the hit ‘Amour censure’, approaching the theme of homophobia, hate and intolerance through her experience with her family and society as a gay woman. 

Born and raised in Nantes, Héloïse Letissier might not sound familiar to you, but it is the real name of the international icon Christine and the Queens. Starting her musical career in the early 2010s, it peaked in 2014 when she released her famous debut album ‘Chaleur humaine’. Gaining notoriety outside of France, Christine and the Queens, also known as Chris, re-recorded some of her hits in English and started touring with Marina and the Diamonds. Letissier said she finds her influences from both English and French pop and doesn’t want to have to choose between the two to define herself. The “Queens” in her name comes from the drag world she’s found inspiration in to create the music she creates now. Genderqueer herself, the singer is now considered an icon in the queer community. We picked the track ‘Damn, dis moi’, from her 2018 album ‘Chris’, in which she explores the power of sexual need and attraction with DâM-FunK.

Now based in Paris, the electropop singer Vendredi sur Mer actually comes from the other side of the Alps, in Switzerland. Charline Minot is not only a musical artist but also studied art. She is a talented photographer, a job which was her first career path before starting music. Her artistic eye can be observed in all her beautifully directed music videos. Vendredi sur Mer – which can be translated to “Friday by the Sea” – shows how much she values travelling through art. From her visual aesthetic to her sound, Vendredi sur Mer breathes eroticism, fantasies and poetry. Her song ‘La femme à la peau bleue’ is an ode to what is ephemeral. Through her vision of a beautiful woman, she sees at a party, she talks about what she feels is beautiful but doesn’t know how long it will last. It is also a beautiful way for her to talk about her musical career. 

As known with his other project Refuge, Florian Bertonnier is shining light on a new side of his musical creativity through a new project called Thx4Crying. As an eternal melancholic, Thx4Crying explores queer romance in an intense but beautiful way. The recently released ‘Soleil sans amour’ makes you want to slow dance naked under the sun while crying about a long-lost love. 

Famous to sing with her harp on stage, Pomme has been immersed in music and instruments from a very young age. Claire Pommet is also one to awake the melancholia in you. The 24-year-old French artist finds a way to calm you down and be present even when singing about intense and deep topics. She opened up about the fact her second LP ‘les failles’ was a lot more personal and truer to herself than anything she had done before. ‘anxiété’, the opening track and first single of the LP, analyzes, without surprise, the feeling of anxiety. Pomme mentions being haunted by this feeling often and at unexpected times, and explores the ways she deals with it. 

Alice et Moi (“Alice and I”) is the project of Paris-born artist Alice Vannoorenberghe. It relates to the duality of her personality. One side is the studious and serious shy person she is -or at least used to be-, and on the other, the extra and bold woman that she worked to become. Our favorite track is the main single from her debut album ‘DRAMA’, released last week. ‘Je suis fan’ is an ode to being horny and being obsessed with the idea of sleeping with a specific person. The electro-pop hit expresses devotion with raw and explicit lyrics.

The French language has always been considered sexy by English speaking people. It is also a great tool to navigate the beauty of queer romance and sex. You can find below a more extensive playlist of French music by artists part of the LGBTQ+ community.