Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Monday December 18: author, composer and singer Axelle Red. She has just published a best-of which contains 30 of her strongest titles in 30 years of career: “AR / 30”.
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Axelle Red is a Belgian artist who worked for two decades with UNICEF and then with Handicap International. She is also a humanist and feminist activist. With a law degree and a passion for music, she mixed it all together. His sensitivity and his outlook on the world gave birth to strong titles like Sensuality And I am waiting for you in 1993, The world is going wrong (1995) or even Stay a woman in 1998. She is also associated with emblematic singers like Renaud, with whom she performed in 2002 Manhattan-Kabul or Youssou N’Dour for The big leagues in 1998.
Axelle Red has just published a best of which contains some of the strongest tracks from her ten studio albums over a 30-year career: AR/30.
franceinfo: AR/30 contains 30 songs. What do they ultimately represent for you?
Axelle Red: In fact, they are like witnesses of what I represent at a certain moment in my life. For me, it’s therapy. First of all, it’s fulfilling a childhood dream because I dreamed of being a singer and above all, I was a fan of great songs. I like texts in French, I want to be up to the task. And I also very quickly wanted to have my own style that didn’t look like anyone else. If I say: therapy, it’s true. For example, all my committed songs, most of them have not even been known to the general public. I have songs like in the album Sisters and Empathy who talk about sorority. I made a double album in English and then in French on sexual violence, 15 years ago. It’s a mix between wanting to denounce and at the same time wanting to create empathy by putting myself in the character of the victims but also in the character of the executioners.
“I’m a huge romantic, so I dream. I’m an idealist.”
You released your first 45 rpm Little Girls under the nickname Fabby, when you were only 14 years old. When we say : “Axelle Red“, we inevitably think of this song Sensuality. You have always kept this simplicity with this sensuality. Isn’t that what defines you?
I wanted to sing for the first time that it’s a girl who decides whether she wants the sensuality of a man or not. It was a slightly avant-garde song at that level, but at the time, we weren’t ready to see its modernity. She had a slightly different sound. People have always associated this word with me, they said: “The sensual Axelle” and all that, but that wasn’t the point of the song. Well, whatever, I tell myself that at some point, a song escapes you and if people like it, they have their reasons. It’s great because I’m part of everyone’s lives and I can just be grateful that the young people from “Star Academy” or “The Voice” are covering my songs. I can only be fair and say: “THANKS“.
To be committed, to assume one’s commitments, to carry them loud and clear, to say things, to also move them forward, to force debate, is that also being an artist?
I actually want to use my art or my creation to send messages. A beautiful melody with a poignant message, it’s incredible. Recently, I wrote the sequel to Manhattan-Kabul for women in Afghanistan. Their situation is really very cruel at the moment and we are forgetting them. And I find that it is the role of every human being to realize that it is we who change things. Maybe let’s start not having these little wars that we have on a daily basis. We, in our little lives, abuse and we do not forgive easily and we do not understand the other and we do not even make the effort to try to see their point of view.
“Everyone changes things or tries to change things in their own way.”
You have always spoken of hope and optimism. At one point, you were called the positivity singer. Is that part of you too?
When I came out Secret garden in 2006, I wrote this album to convince myself that human beings are good because I am very committed. I had seen so much injustice and I couldn’t take it anymore, so this had to heal me. And I remember a journalist who told me: “But Axelle, I don’t understand this album. So much positivism, how can you do that? “I replied: precisely to convince you, to convince myself. And subsequently, I had a completely opposite need. I wrote the album Sisters and Empathy, the most committed, in which I sang much lower, I was no longer talking about utopia, it was more: this is the reality! I needed it at that time. I always go through all the stages.
How do we get out of it when we have sensitivity on edge?
In fact, when I wrote this album, I had a kind of depression that I didn’t understand because everything was going well in my life.
“I hate being put in boxes, I’m rebellious at that level. It depresses us all. It makes us anxious, suspicious of others and I refuse.”
I felt bad for everything that was wrong in the world. I relived it in Covid. When there is too much injustice, I become downright ill because I am too sensitive. You don’t have to go to university to understand life, you just have to dare to think for yourself.