Zélie: pop with something to say

Zélie, 24, was born in Lille, France, with rhythm in her bones. As a child, she lived for performance—theatre, dance, singing, impersonation. She studied dance intensively through her teens, following a structured curriculum that promised a career on stage. But somewhere in the discipline and repetition, the joy hollowed out.

"It got too serious," she recalls. "Too much discipline. I couldn't completely express myself without another vocabulary beyond gestures."

Before she quit dance entirely, Zélie had begun composing on her computer. The moment she started making music, she knew she'd found her voice. "I realized it was the way of expressing myself that corresponded to me the most."

Then came the shock.

In 2018, a young Belgian named Angèle released her debut album *Brol*. It was a sensation—pop in French, urgent and honest, touching on anxiety, social media, insomnia. Things that mattered to her generation. The songs were catchy. You could dance to them. But Angèle was saying something real underneath the rhythm.

"She was doing pop in French and talking about intimate subjects that concerned all of us," Zélie says. "Mine of nothing, it opened something in me: you can dance on sad themes, on true things. It was hyper new for me."

Zélie hadn't yet turned 20 when she started posting songs online. A cover of "Au revoir mon amour" by Dominique A caught attention. But don't let the buoyant arrangements fool you. Her debut album, *Un million de petits chocs* (2024), wrestled with serious territory: her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman, social and sexual violence, love without gender distinction.

With her second record, *Le cœur et sa dictature*, released in February, Zélie made a declaration: the age of softening the message is over.

"I needed to not skim the surface of things, to grab them by the throat, to make them moving for me and for the people listening," she says.

The album is proof. "Ce corps"—"This Body"—addresses rape. But Zélie plants her lyrics on rhythmic, melodic arrangements that feel almost joyful. The music doesn't flinch from the words; it carries them. Her voice sits central, unadorned. She is not camouflaged by production. This was deliberate, shaped by her co-producer, a composer called Caméléon.

"He told me that whatever happened, it had to feel like I was carrying the songs, not the music behind them," she explains. "He didn't want me hidden. Given my need to reclaim my project, I think it was pretty relevant, what he did."

There is also a desire underneath all of this—to transcend reality, to break free from it. To make a record that feels like a conversation between friends, honest and unguarded, but set to music that makes you want to move.

Zélie is doing what Angèle taught her was possible: saying things that matter in a language people want to listen to. Pop with a pulse and a conscience. The kind that sticks not because it's catchy, but because it's true.

She's performing this month at festivals across France. In a world flooded with music that asks nothing of you, Zélie is asking everything.