"I prefer any reaction to indifference", assures Carla Bruni

Singer Carla Bruni.

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• Carla Bruni is releasing a new self-titled album on Friday.

• It had been seven years since the artist had released an opus containing original songs.

  “I really wanted to write.

  She was gripping me, ”she explains to

  20 Minutes

  .

• "I like to tell stories in my songs, to make shudder but, a beating of wings", she also affirms to

  20 Minutes

  .

Carla Bruni receives

mid-September, at home, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

She takes us into her studio where she records most of her models.

There is his guitar, his piano.

On the walls, swarms of images, souvenir photos, snapshots of loved ones, a

cover

that one hardly dares to look at for fear of desecrating one's privacy.

We ask her if it is a "mood board", she replies that they are "souls" and she punctuates the word with a smile which we cannot say if it is more mysterious or playful.

The interview, which she grants on the occasion of the release of her new album, eponymous, Friday, follows the same tone for half an hour.

Carla Bruni appears accessible while remaining at a distance, she does not evade any question but weighs every word of her answers, she expresses herself without jokes but her words are never devoid of elegance.

Former “First Lady”, but not “prima donna”.

It has been seven years since you released an album with original songs.

What was the trigger ?

I really wanted to write.

She was gripping me.

I got into it last November.

The writing part is my favorite part of the whole process, although I also like being on stage and talking about my album.

This is the most sensitive and the happiest step for me.

Why ?

I am lonely and I like to write.

It is both a refuge and a relief.

There are few professions that offer that, normally there is always something tedious.

For me, it is a moment of great happiness, even if inspiration eludes me.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I start from an intimate emotion, but which can be relative to others.

For example, you can tell me a story, which moved me in a personal way… I do not know why besides and I do not try too much to find out, because I am afraid to dismantle the operation and that come back to me more.

Whether it comes to me from someone else's story or from something I am observing… It is always something that I feel.

For me, a song is never a thought.

I'm not like, “I'm going to write about this.

It must be coming from a feeling.

In the past, your songs have often been analyzed with regard to alleged hidden meanings, such as the text of "Penguin" in 2013, in which some think they have guessed an allusion to François Hollande.

Does it annoy you or amuse you?

I am very grateful for the interest that people give to my songs, whether it is to listen to them, analyze them, tell me about them and even not like them.

I prefer any reaction to indifference.

Indifference is the worst.

So it doesn't bother me that my songs are dissected, it makes me laugh (laughs).

I think this is a kind of strange tribute, but it's really fun, even if we dissect them in the wrong way, because it is a sign of interest.

You released two albums, in 2008 and 2013, at a time when your husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, held political office, which could interfere with the perception that we could have of your songs. You are more relaxed about promoting of this new album today, in 2020?

Me, it did not parasitize me much, but it parasitized the others a lot.

It's for them that it's more relaxed since my husband is no longer in a political life.

The fact that he is building a whole new life with his work as a lawyer, with his books, his lectures, etc.

in the private sector, so completely outside the public debate, it makes things easier for journalists.

It disturbed them, it gave them the impression that they had to take an interest in it and they felt at the same time that it was none of my business.

It was boring.

But then again, by arousing interest and curiosity, I think you can always do well. Because I believe that people see who you are, even when they are journalists, even if they are. in a political fight.

Your songs have an intimate dimension contrasting with what the public can project into you in relation to your career, your celebrity, what they imagine to be your way of life.

Is being in this register a way of counterbalancing that?

My songs are as I am and as I write them.

To arrive all dressed in red meat or glitter at the Super Bowl, with forty dancers, I would love that!

But I would love it if I was Lady Gaga.

However, I cannot, it shows immediately: I only have my guitar, I am completely trained in the old fashioned way.

It's not tomorrow that I'm going to do choreography.

And, quite simply, I don't have his talent.

It's not a matter of level, but of who you are, what vocal color you have, where you come from, what you sing.

Me, I like to tell stories in my songs, to make shudder but, a beating of wings, what.

I like songs that make you want to dance, I don't write a lot.

I would love to write r'n'b, things that make you want to enter a kind of trance.

I listen, I watch a lot of people dancing, from Bob Fosse to Christine and the Queens.

But my own music is that.

Love is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for you ...

Inexhaustible.

(Silence)

But there are also several tracks on this album which have a nostalgic, melancholy dimension.

The album is riddled with love and death.

Are you afraid of death?

It's something that has always appealed to me.

Many.

And who troubles me, who does not oppress me, but who worries me.

Yours ?

Those of others?

In general.

To be honest with you, without wanting to make a bazaar philosophy, I don't really see what there is other than love and death in life.

All other things are way below!

Even the most popular.

Fortune, pff: far below!

Generosity, a sense of others, these are great things, but compared to death and love, nothing can compare.

I like to write with essential things like this which, on top of that, are incredibly mundane.

Love and death have in common that they are two great forces that keep our lives afloat.

This new album features “Voglio l'Amore”, the very first Italian song in your repertoire.

Why did you wait so long ?

I thought I didn't know how to write too much in Italian and finally I know.

Finally, I can.

I had never dared to write in this language, perhaps because I was brought up a lot by my grandmother who was French and because it was around adolescence that I started to read a lot.

I then read much more in French than in Italian.

My word bank, in a way, is more in French.

This song came to me after a concert on my last tour last year.

I played a little bit of it to my sister [actress and director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi] with whom I was on Christmas vacation.

She loved it.

I finished it during confinement - I was in the South with my sister and I offered to come and slam on the track.

She said yes, so I'm happy.

What if she asked you to appear in one of her films?

I would gladly go.

I am not a great actress that said ...

You say that you don't have the talent of Lady Gaga, that you are not a great actress… Do you tend to underestimate yourself?

I don't underestimate myself that much, I think.

I like to know my place and my limits, it's not a bad thing, I think.

It allows me to focus on what I can do.

We must not judge ourselves, but we can be aware of the paths that are ours, it's not bad if we find them.

What is your relationship with Italy?

Italy is my country of birth, of my childhood, of my mother tongue.

One of the most beautiful in the world.

Irresistible.

The whole world is in love with us.

Our language is incredibly rich, not only in vocabulary and meaning, but also in sounds.

She has a music in her vowels, a rhythm, an unfolding which is incredible and whatever the accent because there are a lot of different accents in Italy.

It is a land of plenty: there is a remarkable quality of life, overall of existence.

I have great admiration for my country.

Do you think Italians perceive you differently than the French, and vice versa?

I am somewhat perceived as a French Italian in Italy and as an Italian French in France.

I am straddling the two countries.

Jean Cocteau said: “The French are Italians in a bad mood.

I love this sentence.

Our peoples are neighbors, our history is intertwined.

On this album, you cover “The sad boy”, a song you wrote for Isabelle Boulay three years ago…

I had written it for myself.

But Isabelle Boulay wanted an original song and she said to me: “Give it to me, I'll put it in my album and then you, you take it back and you put it in yours.

" I accepted.

I sang it every night during my sixty-date tour last year.

It is therefore very familiar to me.

I wanted to have it on one of my albums because it is close to my heart, I wrote it for my man.

I like to keep the songs I wrote in movement, I like to write in emotion.

These are the ones I prefer to sing.

Calogero composed the melody for the song “The Separated”.

Generally, his style is recognizable from the first seconds of listening.

That is not the case here.

Do you think he managed to fit perfectly into your universe?

I think he is a very great melodist and that he has a lot of universes, even if the most famous songs are those which have what is called his touch.

He's multiple, Calo.

I am honored to have one of his melodies.

We missed a song together on my 2008 album. He gave me the music before and I wrote a lot of different lyrics, in different languages.

At the end, I had a kind of gurgling in my head, confusion and I had a lot of songs.

Eventually he picked it up and gave it to someone else, along with another text.

I had lost this thing and I regret it.

So when I wrote this text, which seemed lyrical to me and full of tears, I thought to myself that there was something more that could contribute.

This is what happened.

This song is about romantic separation.

Are you afraid of separations?

Yes… It scares me.

Especially those that are radical.

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