The formula of the young woman (who will be 30 this summer) allows her the big gap between elitist public and popular audience.

Equally at ease revisiting his repertoire with a symphony orchestra at the Hyper Weekend, Radio France festival, or setting fire to the Francofolies stage in La Rochelle.

It is logical that she raised the Victoire de la Musique on Friday in the female artist category.

This is her 3rd victory after the stage revelation trophies in 2019 and female artist in 2020.

The software update of the French variety she operates can be heard perfectly in her latest album, "Coeur".

Met by AFP, the singer with fringe describes her song "The singer" as "a little sister" of "The groupie of the pianist" by Michel Berger.

"At the time, I didn't think about it at all, but afterwards, yes it occurred to me. These artists (Berger, France Gall, etc.) are part of my playlists, those I listened to during confinement “, she confides.

"My tastes carry the heritage of a French variety a little snubbed by people of my generation and by a certain Parisian elitism when I have always been very sensitive to these songs", unrolls the artist from the Provencal town of Martigues.

Wanted author

Her signature leaves no one indifferent and in recent years she has become a sought-after author by others, such as Julien Clerc, for whom she wrote two texts on the album "Terrien".

No nostalgia under his pen, but a lucid look at the time.

“Respire encore” can thus be heard as a hymn to post-confinement letting go, but also suggests the light found after the darkness of an intimate prison.

A strong and feminist message that we already found in "La grenade", success of her first album with the predestined name "Sainte-Victoire".

"I never wanted to choose between serious and dancing, two elements that we find in songs like + Marcia Baïla + (cancer in the background) or + Le petit train + (evocation of the Shoah) by Rita Mitsouko, or + Heart of glass+ (rupture/harassment) of Blondie”, she develops.

French singer Clara Luciani on the stage of the 37th Victoires de la Musique at the Seine Musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the Hauts-de-Seine, on February 11, 2022 BERTRAND GUAY AFP

The title track of the album "Heart" is in the same line, a call to the dancefloor and a denunciation of domestic violence.

The neo-disco atmosphere of "Heart" also avoids the trap of the look in the retro.

To take care of her musical packaging, Clara Luciani has collaborated with figures from the electro scene like Yuksek or Breakbot.

"They are my contemporaries, they counterbalance references that I have, very vintage, and make it possible to avoid the pitfall of pastiche or to make a record from the 1970s in the 2020s. They reconnect me to modernity, the record is current".

Long success in taking shape

This decline in her work is probably explained because success was not achieved overnight for this singer from the middle class, mother caregiver and father bank employee (note that her sister Léa - Ehla de her stage name - is also a singer).

This close friend of Alex Kapranos (singer of Franz Ferdinand) has long searched for herself artistically, by providing backing vocals for the group La Femme or for the singer Raphaël at the start.

The latter explains to AFP that he "attended with great admiration" to the "fulfillment" of the one who also provided guitars and keyboards for him on tour.

French singer Raphaël in Paris, February 22, 2019 Thomas SAMSON AFP / Archives

Clara Luciani is the story of a delayed explosion.

The first opus "Sainte-Victoire" was released in April 2018 but it took almost a year for "La grenade" to hit the radio stations.

The title then finds a good echo in the context #MeToo and is part of the current of new voices of feminism in music, such as Angèle with "Balance ton quoi" or Suzane with "SLT" (which also denounces harassment of street).

With always, as Clara Luciani says, this "need to dance to exorcise".

© 2022 AFP