French electro-pop artist Kid Francescoli chatted with #Powerjournalist Markos Papadatos about his new album “A Kind Wave.”
Your new album, A Kind Wave, feels warmer and more organic, drawing inspiration from travel, new encounters and the arrival of summer in the South of France. What was happening in your life when you started making this record, and how did those experiences shape its sound?
Traveling makes you feel things in a more intense way, which is obviously very inspiring. And we traveled a lot and very far from home for the last tour, which lasted almost three years. So it was a lot of new cultures, foods, and experiences that were so exciting to live.
Also, each coming back home or home sick feeling were more intense too, when you leave for a long time in a distant country, it makes you realize all the beauty of home, especially Marseille with its unique light, the sun and the sea here, the salt on your skin during the warm summer nights, I guess all this has played a major role in the writing of the album.
You’ve described a world where electronic pop, vintage synths and cinematic storytelling meet. With A Kind Wave, did you consciously want to explore that sonic direction, or did the album evolve naturally as you followed your instincts?
I try to not theorize things too much when I write/record, I just let things come naturally indeed. And I guess all of the experiences and feelings we talked about before are there, hiding and slowly infusing somewhere in the subconscious and suddenly pop when you play some instruments or write lyrics and melodies. I believe the songs and the album made their way and you have to be opened to accidents and surprises to follow them, it’ like they are taking you by the hand.
Andréa Durand features on five tracks across the album, including your single “Don’t Get On The Plane”. What does she bring to your music, and how has your creative relationship developed throughout the making of the record?
She has an amazingly wide vocal range. She is a singer, I mean a real one who can sings almost everything. As a producer, that’s like having the most precious instrument you could find. She can do, and has done on the album, light pop vocalizes, r’n’b and rap lines, gospel, dance music vibes, and it works each time, I felt like it enlarged my spectre of sounds and textures, expanded my playground.
One good example was the vocal she recorded for a loop that ended up being “I love you everyway”: after a couple of months working on it, I had this feeling that her vocals were made for a bigger song, something more dancy and powerful, so I took them off that song and create the music that ended up being the song “The Groove” around, it’s like the vocals took me to another place.
“Moon (And It Went Like)” has now surpassed 500 million streams and found a life of its own through social media, celebrity endorsements and Emily in Paris. How has it felt watching a song you created travel so far beyond its original audience, and has that success changed the way you approach making music?
It feels good, I mean I could never complain about it. Having more and more people listening and loving the song, discovering my music, singing and crying at shows when we play it, how could I dream of a better thing? But I try not to think too much about it, especially when I’m in the studio.
That’s why I took the gold record awards for the song off the studio. Having them just above my head when I was writing new music was simply impossible. I have to keep in mind that this song was an accident (as it is and all the songs are) and not try to do it again.
There’s a strong sense of escapism in your music, almost as if each track belongs in a film or a particular scene. When you’re producing, do you visualize places, people or stories first, and how important is that cinematic quality to your creative process?
I love cinema, I watch movies all the time, and I love listening to soundtracks, I think that might be my favorite genre. I like to listen to songs that tell stories or suddenly put you in another universe, you know that feeling when you are just living an ordinary everyday moment and you put some music in your headphones and as soon as the song starts it’s like everything suddenly makes sense or looks like you and everything around are in a movie scene, that’s my favorite feeling in music so I guess it shapes my writing.
Earlier this year, you collaborated with luxury fragrance house INITIO Parfums Privés on The Initio Mixtape, translating scents into electronic music. What did that project teach you about creating music from something other than sound, and did it influence your approach to A Kind Wave?
It’s always good to create with boundaries. I loved doing it for INITIO because I had to adapt the music to the texts, like building a comfy nest for them. I’ve tried to keep that in mind when I’ve started working on the album, to not go all over the place with the songs. This one should be the slow instrumental, this one the dancy one, etc it helps you to progress in the creation.
You’re bringing your live show back to North America in Spring 2027, with stops including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and New York. How do you translate the intimate, cinematic atmosphere of your records into a live performance, and what can audiences expect from this next tour?
I focus the live shows on dancing and joy, so I keep the more energetic songs for the stage. We’ve put some of the slow ones in the set before but it didn’t really work. There are still some atmospheric moments but the most important for me today and for this tour is to share enthusiasm with the crowd, you know when they smile and dance and it makes you smile so they smile even more, that kind of atmosphere can only be created with dance and groove. For the people that came to our last tour let’s say that it will be and upgraded version, with more of everything.
After seven studio albums, a global viral hit and years of building your own musical universe, what feels most exciting to you about this chapter of Kid Francescoli? Is there still a sound, collaboration or creative direction you’re itching to explore?
I just want what you described and that is a real dream coming true to keep on going, you know recording and releasing albums, touring the world, that’s all I was dreaming of and pretending in my room when I was a little kid, and today I feel so lucky I can do it everyday and make a living out of it. Sound speaking there are directions that I’ve started to explore in this album and that could be a starting point for the next chapter, but I have to experience life first.
To learn more about Kid, follow him on Instagram.
