The French Feminist Playlist I: The Chanteuses who have become today’s Feminist Icons

Belgian singer-songwriter Angèle performing at a music festival in 2018. (Photo: Thesupermat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

‘The French feminist playlist’ explores how feminism has come to be so influential in French music today, arguably to a greater extent than current Anglophone music. Throughout the series, Freya Swinburne reviews the music being made by female Francophone artists today, examining in each column individual artists and specific songs, in the hope that that by the end of the column, readers can compile their own playlist of Francophone feminist music.

From the surrealists, to the Nouvelle Vague, it is clear that France has been indelibly shaped by its various cultural movements. It might seem that now, in an age of rife individualism, you would be hard pressed to find collectives of the same stature. In recent years, however, there has been a new group making waves on the French cultural scene. Who are they? Well, if I say Angèle, Clara Luciani, Pomme, you might have an idea… A group of women bringing their own unique brand of feminism to French music. Each of them broaches different themes, from different angles, but they share in their desire to empower others. Yet, to fully understand their significance, it’s important to understand the broader tradition they are contributing to, and with that in mind, let’s take a look at how feminism came to infiltrate French music.

Imagine we’re in the 12th century. The first European university has just been founded in Bologna, the Crusades are taking place across Europe and the Middle East and Rhenish polymath Hildegarde von Bingen is laying the initial foundations for the feminist music of today. Although she was evidently not campaigning for women’s voting rights in the Rhine at this stage, she did use her compositions to highlight the importance of the female body, voice and reproductive capacities. In doing so, she rejected the widely accepted idea of women’s inferiority to men. Though her chants and psalms do not correspond to the feminist bops that we have become accustomed to, von Bingen undoubtedly played an important role in kicking off the tradition of promoting feminism through music. 

Fast-forward to the early 20th century and feminism is making its broader debut on the music scene. The suffragettes across the UK and the US turned to music to emphasise their message of emancipation and solidarity. This was perhaps most noticeable in the songs that they reworked to convey their demands as they marched. Imagine, for example, the Marseillaise but with the lyrics ‘Make reckless rules understand/ That women must be free/ That women will be free.’ It packs a punch, doesn’t it? Music came therefore to serve the useful purpose of making their specific demands extremely memorable, and it was consequently used as a tool to empower women, spreading beyond the catchy tunes sung at the marches. In 1910 Dame Ethel Smyth composed what would come to be the first feminist anthem: The March of the Women. Just as Hildegarde von Bingen inaugurated the creation of feminist music, Smyth set another precedent for feminist anthems which has persisted across the subsequent waves of feminism. 

With the publication of Simone de Beauvoir’s Deuxième Sexe (1949), and thus the beginning of the Second Wave, feminism in music entered a new phase. Pop culture espoused feminism to a greater degree than ever before, broaching previously taboo topics such as the gender pay gap, marital rape, birth control and societal beauty standards. This was doubly reflected in the music produced at the time. For example, in her hit song ‘You don’t own me’ (1963), 17-year-old Lesley Gore declared ‘You don’t own me, I’m not just one of your many toys’ and, in doing so, spoke out against the wide-spread objectification of women at the time. Indeed, echoes of this would resound in later anthems released, including Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These boots are made for walkin’ (1966) and Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ (1967). It was also at this time that feminism started to infiltrate French music, with singers like Véronique Sanson (in ‘Besoin de personne’ (1972)) advocating for women’s independence. This period therefore played a foundational role for the French feminist singers of today. 

Singers continued to express their unique forms of feminism through their music in the following years, from Cindy Lauper, to Beyonce, to Katy Perry- the list is long. But when was it that feminism hit the main stage in French music? 

With the release of Angèle’s ‘Balance ton quoi’ in 2018, feminism truly exploded onto the French music scene. Set in the context of #Balancetonporc, the French equivalent of #Metoo, Angèle’s undeniable bop attacks everyday sexism and street harassment. The music video takes this a step further, as she sends a group of people to the ‘anti-sexism academy.’ Here, she presents justice and education as the key weapons in the fight for equality. The song then took on a life of its own, with over 106 million views on Youtube and 150 million listens on Spotify (my own streams constituting about a thousand of these…). Balance ton quoi undoubtedly achieved an unprecedented success. It has since been sung at rallies and protests for women’s rights across the French speaking world and beyond— a true feminist anthem.

Angèle has continued to write with a strong focus on women’s rights and personal identity. For example, in her most recent album Nonante-cinq (2021), she tackled issues including domestic abuse and consent in Tempête and Mots justes respectively. Her music therefore distinguishes itself through its efforts to cast light on issues which are perhaps less frequently discussed in pop music. It is also significant as it marks a turning point in French music: the arrival the post-#Metoo generation. 

Since 2018, other artists including Pomme and Clara Luciani have risen to fame for similar reasons to Angèle, each producing songs taken up by the feminist cause. Furthermore, in the past year or so these artists, alongside the likes of Barbara Pravi, Camelia Jordana and Yseult, have all released new albums. This seems to have created a new wave of feminist music, and so we are able to see this remarkable group of French chanteuses emerging and expressing their unique forms of activism through their music. Though it is clear that they are now contributing to a larger tradition of feminism in music, it is also clear that they are creating something new and exciting in the Francophone world. Stay tuned to find out more with the French Feminist Playlist…