Catherine Ringer reveals the secrets of making Rita Mitsouko songs

INTERVIEW

"In Rita Mitsouko's songs, there are daytime songs and nighttime songs".

From the Vieilles Charrues stage, and in front of a frenzied audience, Catherine Ringer begins an explanation of the music she has created for several decades with Fred Chicin.

A few minutes after the end of the concert, she finds Emilie Mazoyer in the dressing room to whom she explains how the hits of Rita Mitsoukou were born.

>> Experience the Old Plows with Émilie Mazoyer on Europe 1 from July 8 to 18

"

Ding dang dong

 is an early morning song"

"The difference between song of the day and song of night, it is already at the level of the composition", she assures.

"When we find songs at night, it's because we have gone to distant universes. Everyone is asleep, and you, you are awake and like in a bubble. But it is also the lyrics that make that it becomes a day song or a night song. "

One of the duo's best-known titles escapes its day / night dichotomy.

"

is an early morning song," explains Catherine Ringer.

"I also like the dawns, when just the day begins, when everything is contrasted and everything is mixed."

"There were euphoric times and very hard times"

Song of dawn, daylight or night, Rita Mitsouko's music has always been born from the symbiosis between Catherine Ringer and Fred Chichin. "One of the two brought in what's called a basic 'low riff', or a killer chord sequence, or the guitar riff, or the melody, or the drum beat, etc." she, lambasting the cliché of the man who writes the music and the woman the lyrics. "Sometimes one would write a verse and the other the chorus or passage that took the song somewhere else, so as not to make it too static."

"We had lots of ways of doing things, sometimes with very hard times as well, as in all long-term human associations," she continues.

"There were some euphoric times and times it was kind of tense and dramatic. But we always helped each other."

Words born in a hurry

This was the case during the recording of their album 

, released in 2000. "We had done all the music, all that was missing was the lyrics of a song. It was really last minute. had tension because it was absolutely necessary that it come out and that we finish the recording ", tells Catherine Ringer. "I was seized with a desire to sleep and to run away. Everyone was waiting, it was necessary to write then, to find the lyrics. And I was tired of being tired."

"Write that!", Then retorts Fred Chicin. "Write that thing, that you're tired of being tired." This is what Catherine Ringer does then. "And that gave the song

" she reveals. "We always helped each other out like that. And the very diverse team that we have on stage on this tour serves that job well."