In July, Christine and the Queens announced that he was changing his moniker to Redcar. While details were mostly vague at the time, it was implied that this change would come off the back of a new album. Now, a few months down the line, said album Redcar les adorables étoiles has faced a delay due to an injury and the name change hasn’t quite… managed to park within the lines. rien dire, the first song released from Redcar les adorables étoiles, was credited to Christine and the Queens upon release. The same goes for La Chanson Du Chevalier, which appears to be the project’s official second single. We can only assume the conundrum of Chris’s renaming. Redcar is the new incarnation of Chris, the chameleonic performer and auteur. We can only assume that this may not have gone down too well with his higher ups, and with the arrival of La Chanson Du Chevalier, you might begin to see why. For this new era, Chris is embracing a sort of masculine performativity that’s distinct from the blurry genderfuckery that made him famous. Redcar, it would appear, is Chris’s interpretation of (and assimilation to) the hypermasculine libertine; sexed up, coked up, drowning in cars and girls.
This brings us to La Chanson Du Chevalier, whose title translates to “The Knight’s Song.” In a long winded poem shared on his Instagram upon the release of the song, Chris begins: “my existential victory lies in aesthetics.” The song is classic Christine and the Queens: a moody, synth heavy 80’s throwback, it creeps with a smokey allure and slight eeriness. Crooned emphatically in French, it’s emotionally heightened. It immediately recalls the dubiously attractive edge of the New Romantics, or anything by Visage, its style rooted in a noirish sensibility. The song touches on identity and gender expectations through the icon of the knight, a point of view from which Chris the performer is able to access Redcar, the alter-ego. In the accompanying music video, he presents Redcar as an almost cartoonish sailor boy, instantly bringing to mind the queer hypermasculine iconography of Jean-Paul Gaultier. As Redcar, Chris is somewhat of a clown; a caricature of the masculine in order to assume the masculine on a somatic level. The apprehension he may be experiencing behind the scenes is likely due to the fear of people just not getting it. La Chanson Du Chevalier isn’t nearly as boundary pushing as its packaging. In fact, it fits quite neatly in Chris’s overall discography. But if you take a moment to dig into the lyrics, which in typical Christine and the Queens fashion wax poetic, you’ll find the song as a frame for the actual artwork; Chris himself. The mystery of Redcar is, in fact, quite simple. He is Chris assuming the image of the knight, the sailor, the man, and sculpting his iconography accordingly. This transcends pop; this is performance art.
Redcar les adorables étoiles is out November 11. Pre-order it here. Watch the music video for La Chanson Du Chevalier below.
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