“One of my favourite movies ever”: the album that shaped Christine and the Queens
Christine and the Queens is all about being larger than life. It’s challenging to hold your own alongside some of the leading voices in the industry today, yet the power behind his voice has led to some of the most infectious pop music of the past decade. That theatricality comes from within, but when searching for the most theatrical records of all time, Chris found nothing compared to what Lou Reed accomplished on Berlin.
But if he wanted to, Lou Reed could have easily called it a day after breaking up The Velvet Underground and still be known as a legend amongst songwriters. He was never trying to give Bob Dylan a run for his money or anything, but the pictures he painted with just a few words on his best albums left people elated and disgusted within the span of just a handful of tracks.
Transformer was the moment that he first saw pop success, but Berlin is a very different animal. Described by Reed as his version of a Shakespeare play, this is the kind of unspeakable tragedy that could leave anyone in shambles. It might just be about a relationship falling apart, but when someone gets to a track like ‘The Bed’ talking about someone grappling with ending their life, there’s usually never a dry eye wearing headphones.
Whereas most people would treat music as an intimate experience, Chris interpreted the album like watching a massive film for the first time, telling TIDAL, “This album is one of my favourite movies ever. Uncompromising, sad and cruel, with Lou Reed as a narrator – his voice is, for me, the one that articulates your thoughts, your secrets. This album is a threat because it is desperate, but it has this appeal, this grip – once you listened to it, something changes.”
It’s not that far off to call it a glorified movie. Despite visual albums not being a medium at the time of release, it feels like listening to a one-act play whenever Berlin starts playing, as Reed leads you through this great tragedy. But that was far from the last time he ever attempted something like this.
Although he would eventually return to his roots on albums like New York, hearing him interpret Edgar Allen Poe’s work on projects like The Raven saw him dig deeper into his soul, to the point where he was comfortable enough to work with Metallica on the retelling of a stage production on Lulu.
The latter may have gone over about as well as one would expect an art-rock Metallica project to sound like, but that was part of Reed’s appeal. Every step of his career was about being fearless in the face of the unknown, and Berlin was just another example of him trying to see what he could do while still being taken seriously as a professional songwriter.
The same could be said about Christine and the Queens’ latest records as well, usually taking the building blocks of what pop music is known for and then channelling it into this kaleidoscopic take on what made songs so catchy in the first place. Whereas most artists are looking to find a shortcut to get their song in the hit parade, both Chris and Reed have a method of using their songs to find the person that lives inside themselves.
