CHAD PARKHILL speaks to EMILIE SIMON about The Flower Book, bilingual songwriting, and the loneliness of being a workaholic chanteuse.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me the pleasure of introducing you to Miss Emilie Simon. You may already know her, of course, from her catchy-as-hell single (and Triple J favourite) Fleur de Saison, but there’s a lot more to her than the one song.

For those of you who don’t know the story so far, Simon came to national attention through her track Fleur De Saison, which was featured on the 2007 So Frenchy So Chic compilation. Triple J picked up Fleur De Saison, and it soon proved enough of a hit with Australian punters that it was placed on high rotation. Soon enough, Filter Music gathered together the cream of her three albums thus far, whacked it on to one disc entitled The Flower Book, and announced her first Australian tour. As they used to say in showbiz, a star is born.

“I’m very happy about that,” Simon says of her rise to fame. “But, at the same time, it’s so strange because I’ve never been to Australia. I mean, we are so far apart on the planet, but it’s so great – the feeling is so great.”

If Simon seems slightly bemused by the attention given to her in both her home country of France and Australia, it’s because she works in relative isolation, perfecting her tracks in her home studio – a process which leads to a sense of wonderment that anyone else would listen to her music.  

“You create a song in your bedroom, you know?” she says. “You write a song in your bedroom and you do your best to make it sound good, and to do something very special, something you’re very proud of. Then the album is released and you don’t know what happened – and it’s so great to imagine that people on the other side of the world listen to you. I’m really happy about that.”

Although the swiftness of her ascent to indie celebrity in Australia is indeed remarkable, what is possibly more remarkable is the fact that it has taken the Australian public four years to cotton on to Simon’s talents. In Europe, she has been known as ‘the French Björk’ since 2003, when she released her self-titled début. This album – which accounts for a good deal of the material in The Flower Book – went on to win the Best Electronic Music Album at the 2004 Victoires De La Musique (the French version of the ARIA awards).

For her next album, Simon was approached by the directors of the documentary film La Marche De L’Empereur (released in English as The March Of The Penguins), who wanted her to compose the score. The film went on to become a critical and commercial success both inside France and world-wide in 2005 – but Simon’s music was, unfortunately, scrapped from the English-language release, to be replaced by a more pedestrian score by Alex Wurman.

This misfortune turned out to be but a blip on the radar for Simon, who was recording her second proper album, Végétal. This album, released in 2006, contained her music at its finest – electronic pop full of wickedly sharp edges, contrasted with fuzzy guitars and her charmingly faux-naïf voice. With Fleur De Saison as its lead single, it went on to score her another Victoires De La Musique award and cemented her reputation as an ambassador for French music – landing her on So Frenchy So Chic 2007.

Those of you who liked Fleur De Saison but aren’t keen on an album written entirely in French need not worry – The Flower Book contains many tracks sung in English, including a cover of The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog. Yet Simon insists that her bilingual songwriting process is not a ploy to get as wide an audience outside of France as possible whilst not falling afoul of France’s prohibitive radio network legislation.

“When I sing in English, you could think it’s easier to be understood outside of France – of course!” she says. “But at the same time, when I travel – when I go, for example, to America – I ask the people, what do you want? Well, I have a song called Désert, which exists in two versions: one in English, one in French. The original version is the English version, but then a friend of mine heard it and said I should try something with French words. So he proposed some words, and it was so good I did another version in French. And when I go to America with this song, I ask the people, ‘Do you want the English version or the French?’ They ask me for the French.” (The Flower Book reflects this, providing the French version.)

For Simon, language comes second: “I don’t think it’s really linked with the language. It’s more about what’s inside the music. You have some music which is more universal, and if you sing in English or whatever over the top, it still works, because the music has its own language.”

Yet for all of her obvious accomplishments at such a young age, Simon is not connected to the broader music scene in France – neither the underground ‘French touch’ movement led by Daft Punk, Air, and Etienne De Crécy, nor the mainstream global pop/rock of Java, Les Hurlements d’Léo and Manu Chao.

“I don’t, really,” she says flatly, when asked where she positions herself in terms of a larger national music scene. “I never do that. I work my way. It’s lonely work – I compose my own songs, and I never really make collaborations. I do everything in my own studio.” She pauses. “I’m French. And I am French with my culture and language, and all of the things that come with that culture and language. But I don’t do typically French music. I just love music, so I listen to music from all over the world, and from all times. I don’t ask myself where I am in terms of French music now.”

Even if Simon turns out to be a one-hit wonder in Australia, dedicated fans need not worry that she’ll stop any time soon. “The reason I’m making albums is not especially to be played on the radio,” she says. “If that happens, I’m really happy, but it’s something I don’t think about when I’m writing a song. When I’m writing a song, I’m inspired by something very far from the market. So I just write the music I feel, the music that I love: the music that comes from inside me.”

Emilie Simon’s album The Flower Book is out now through Filter Music / Shock. She will tour Australia in June 2007 – keep an eye on RAVE for details.

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