Tone Glow 124: Laetitia Sadier

An interview with the French singer-songwriter and Stereolab co-founder about embracing femininity, being inspired by riot grrrl, and her new solo album 'Rooting for Love'

Laetitia Sadier

Photo by Marie Merlet

Laetitia Sadier (b. 1968) is a singer-songwriter who was born in Paris, France. Eager to find like-minded individuals who were passionate about music, she moved to London in 1989. Prior to this, she met Tim Gane at a McCarthy gig in Paris, soon joining the band. They would dissolve and Stereolab would form, becoming the main focus of Sadier’s musical career throughout the 1990s. Sadier was also part of Monade and, more recently, Modern Cosmology. She released her first solo album in 2010, titled The Trip. Her new solo album, Rooting for Love, is out February 23rd via Drag City and is about healing and embracing femininity. Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with Sadier on February 2nd, 2024 via Zoom to discuss her upbringing, the early musical experiences that changed her life, and the importance of healing and being courageous.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: I was revisiting the Modern Cosmology album from last year, What Will You Grow Now? (2023). The last track, “A Time to Blossom,” has this wonderful lyric: “One can’t teach an acorn / In fact, one needs not to teach it how to grow into an oak tree / Given a chance, its potentialities will unfold.” Growing up, your parents wanted you to have a secure, “normal” job but you ended up going down a different path. I know you were born in France in 1968—a highly political time. Do you feel like your upbringing shaped the direction of your career just because of what you were seeing? Do you feel like the space and time you grew up in encouraged you to live a life that was atypical?

Laetitia Sadier: That’s very tricky to establish. I think we are the product of our environment to a large degree, but then there are so many parameters that come into play, and so many attractions you’re gonna have for so many things. For example, I always loved music, and somehow I was attracted to more indie, non-mainstream stuff. I was attracted to different voices, different types of music. And why? I have no idea (laughter). It just happened. You can view these things through various prisms, politics being one of them, which I think is important. But then there’s a spiritual prism—that you have a path, that you have this journey and you’re here to learn. I do not know how to phrase it, but we are here to learn things. I’m quite attracted to this narrative of choosing your life in order to learn certain things—it brings answers to some of the questions you have.

I was born in May ’68 at the height of the clashes between certain parts of the population. The authorities were, of course, very repressive. Not everyone was into this struggle. My parents, for instance, viewed it very negatively. I think my mother was extremely anxious that there would maybe be no food. It was really scary. I was brought up in an environment that was not viewing these political struggles with a good eye. And I grew up Catholic as well, and I was none of that. I was not a right-wing conservative. I rebelled. And maybe some of my other sisters did not rebel in the same ways, or at least so overtly. I certainly was overtly against this because I heard Jesus Christ’s message—love each other and know thyself—and what I saw instead was denial, hatred, and racism. There were priests in my family who were telling me I was evil because I was a girl. I was a little girl! It was extremely hurtful to develop a positive idea of my femininity, and I had to really struggle. It was easier to reject my femininity than to embrace it, and that’s a very serious, bad thing. I was evil just because my body was feminine! I hope young girls don’t have to go through that. I saw so much hypocrisy (makes gagging sound). I was disgusted!

I mean, my family is not all that bad. I love them. But it is true that there were discrepancies between the message of Jesus and the lives they were leading. What was really impactful for me was that, when I was a kid, we lived in America a few times. It was in ’68 and ’69, and then from 1978 to 1980. I was 10 to 12 years old, and when we lived in America, we took two massive trips around the United States and saw so many things. It wasn’t as extreme as it is today; it might not be so obvious when you go from one state to the next—it was not as pronounced. You know, everything is big in America (laughter). The portions on your plate are big! The sky is big! The roads are endless and the cars are big (laughter).

My dad would drive us from one school to the other school; we did two schoolings, the American schooling and then the French schooling in the afternoon. We would listen to the radio and there was music coming out of it, and some of it was cool. Some of it was really speaking to my ears. I remember “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. God, it was a divine sound! I also remember Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979) was out. There was an array of music. And there were the oldies stations.

So those were moments that were very dear to me. They were impactful and changed the course of my life. When we went back to live in France in 1980, we lived in Montpellier. So we left the Paris suburb and we were in Montpellier in the South, where the mentalities were maybe not so open. I really felt like I was an alien who was just dropped there. But still, music continued to take on a prominent space in my life as a friend.

I love hearing you talk about this. It’s really interesting how big music was for you, and how even in talking about America, the memories you have are of the music. Growing up, your parents may have been conservative, but were there specific people—and these may have been your siblings or friends or the artists you were listening to—who granted you permission to live the life you eventually led?

I think music was the rock I could cling onto. When we lived in the States, I felt pretty alone. But when we lived in Montpellier, I had a couple of friends who were really into music as well. It was the new-wave era, so the early ’80s. There was The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division. That scene really satisfied me, particularly bands like Young Marble Giants, The Residents, Joy Division. I wasn’t a huge fan of The Cure, but they were certainly on my radar, and I wished I’d gotten more into Siouxsie and the Banshees because wow, I wish I could’ve seen them live at the time. So this scene was coming out of punk, so imagine in the South of France… like, maybe if you lived in London there was actually a scene, but it was harder here, and I was really young. I was 12 or 13—I was a kid.

Music was at the forefront of my mind, but trying to connect with others was not so easy. It was a journey, and then in 1983 we moved back to the suburb and what had happened in the meantime was that the FM radio bandwidth had been freed, so anyone could start a radio, provided they had the equipment. There were no ads, so no income, basically. And I also think no swearing or hate speech—there were a few rules. But you could play whatever you want! So imagine, I moved back to the Paris region and am by then 15 and have a radio. There was so much good music! That was also very impactful.

I was still quite lonely but I had a friend in high school, actually. I remember seeing The Smiths on television—this was the really early days of The Smiths—and I was instantly entranced by what I was hearing, which was “This Charming Man.” The next day I asked this friend, “Do you know The Smiths?” And he said, “Yes, I’ve got the cassette.” And the next day he brought it and I was listening to it. He was a cool source of actualizing what I was hearing, and we could discuss the music too. So at that school, I was still lonely in my left field of music, but then later on, I decided I’d go to the UK because I knew that’s where I could meet people. I knew that’s where it would be happening, much more than in France. I tried several times to make music with people, but it was more like, oh, let’s smoke joints and talk about what we’re going to do, but not actually do any of it (laughter). And that was annoying!

How many times did that happen?

Of trying to get together with people? Three times. Once these guys were like, “Okay, we’re gonna do a cover version of David Bowie.” So I learned the song and went to the rehearsal room, and they didn’t turn up! I was like, well, that’s not very serious. So if I wanted to do music, I would need to move my ass to another place where it would feel more possible. I went to London as an au pair. I was 18.

Is that when you met Tim [Gane]?

No. I met Robert [Bertram] the last two weeks I was there, so then I would visit Robert from France, and he was in a band called the Sperm Wails. And they were super rad. I’d never seen anything like it—I mean, I was 18, I was young, but I’d never experienced that. They were a three-piece group. A guy was hitting the bass with whatever he had. Like, in a flea market he bought one of those metallic balls with spikes on it that are on a chain and he would smack his bass with that. And you had a woman, Elvina [Flower], standing up and just playing one snare or tom, maybe two things. It was really basic. And Robert was singing on top of that.

It was extremely violent in the sentiment, and very nihilistic, but it was not projected onto people. It was not this sense of, “I’m going to project my violence onto you.” The violence was more reverted towards them, somehow. It was a contained violence and poured out through the music. It was super extreme—I had never seen anything like that—and I was too young to be a punk. But this was a different kind of punk. I walked into this small venue in Camden as one person and then walked out a different person. So that was an initiation as to what seeing a gig could do to you. It can totally transform your molecules (laughter).

These are incredible stories. So your life was getting changed by music. I know that your mother wanted to be an opera singer. Do you feel like you learned about this love for music from your mom at all?

It is true that my parents, in their own ways, were music lovers. My dad really had an appreciation for music. It was really bizarre. He liked Pierre Henry—musique concrète. But he also loved easy listening. When we lived in America, he had one of those reel-to-reel 4-track or 8-track machines and he would record from the radio. I don’t know how many of these big reels he had, but it was a lot—it was endless! He would record all these to bring back to France because there was no easy-listening station there. And he loved Bach. And some jazz.

My mother loved opera but I did not find myself in opera for the longest time. It’s only a recent phenomenon for me. I’ve only seen two operas in my life, and actually, they’re playing La Walkyrie by Wagner in Brussels. I would really love to see that new production, and I think I’m ready to receive a full Wagner Walkyrie. It’ll be mind-blowing. I don’t know if the production will come to London.

So you went to London, you saw Robert’s band and was blown away, and then you were in the band McCarthy later on. You were telling me that you were lonely growing up but then made this decision to move, with this intent to find others who were like-minded. When was the first time you found a sense of community around music?

Just for the record, I met Tim in Paris at a gig after I had been an au pair. I had joined university by then and I went to gigs and I went to see McCarthy and that’s where we met. It was 1988. And I moved to London in September, 1989. By then, Tim and I had fallen in love so we moved in together. And there, McCarthy was going on and so I joined. I wanted to do music. Then McCarthy stopped, we started Stereolab, and indeed—god, London in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were gigs every night! Bands… all the time! And they played a lot. We’d see Th' Faith Healers maybe three times a month! So there was a lot of activity and the scene was really thriving. I didn’t realize it; I took it for granted. But wow, we did not know which gig to attend, and sometimes we’d go to two in a night if we strategized.

So there was this community, and I think it was a healthy one because we helped each other—we supported each other, we went to each other’s gigs, we lent each other gear. There was this healthy sense of collaborating. And there were very different bands as well—there were Gallon Drunks, who were more rockabilly. And there were also the riot grrrl bands. That opened doors for people to fight together, to do things collectively—collective action. And of course that was around feminist ideas and it’s true that some men felt defensive when these women would say, “All the girls to the front!” Some men felt really pissed off! But it was healthy, it was super healthy. It was really empowering. At the time, with Mary [Hansen], we saw it with such a good eye. Like hey, women are to be reckoned with now and you’re not gonna mess us around! You’re not gonna intimidate us! You’re not gonna belittle us! So this was very informative as well, especially as a woman in this industry—I don’t like that word—as a woman in this milieu. It’s true that I wasn’t taken seriously as a woman. I was belittled. In interviews I was ignored.

You mentioned earlier about rejecting femininity as a child. I’m thinking about your new album, Rooting For Love, and the first track on the album, “Who + What.” There’s that line, “Embrace my goddess.” I want you to think back on the entire span of your life, from when you were a child to who you are today. Do you mind sharing an example of how you rejected your femininity as a child and then an example of when you were embracing your goddess? I’m interested in hearing about this trajectory of how you were “embracing your goddess” throughout the course of your life.

My mom and dad wanted four boys. Turns out we were four girls. I was number three and so it was probably like, “Another girl, my goodness, what a disaster!” My elder sister had the right to have long hair, but after that the girls had short hair. We were brought up as boys. They wanted boys. So there was this conditioning. You know, it’s not wrong to want four boys in a society where boys have more privileges than girls, so in a way the sentiment was that they wanted the best for us. We were brought up like… blokes.

Can you give me an example of how that was the case?

Our clothes! For a long, long time, I dressed as a bloke. And people would say, “pardon monsieur.” I was referred to and looked like a guy, so if people didn’t look closely… well, I was tall and had broad shoulders.

I would say that the riot grrrl thing… that’s when the bricks were moving in the foundation. I was like, “Nope, not anymore. We’re not favoring the masculine over the feminine.” And with Mary, we felt that this was the right thing to do. We wanted to assert our femininity. We wanted to stop being fucking blokes. We wanted to be accepted, we wanted to be what we are. We are women, and we are strong and we are wonderful and we are fantastic—we are goddesses (chuckles).

Was there anything you were particularly doing in terms of agitating? Were you doing things that made men upset because you were proud of being a woman and embracing your femininity?

I don’t know if it came about explicitly, but in some of my lyrics, certainly. I can’t remember the title but it was about women being hidden in their apartments so that they are protected, like it was for their own good. It was this narrative, like (sarcastically) “protect women because the world out there is so dangerous.” How about men look into their basic desires and have them work on that? So that we can cohabitate and not hide the women. [Editor’s note: the song is “Strobo Acceleration”].

I always had—and in my personal life with Tim—a competitivity. It was not livable. I would see it with other friends too, where their boyfriend or husband was in direct competition with them. It’s so destructive. There should be no competition: you’re good at this and I’m good at that—everybody is useful. Even the biggest fucking idiot on this planet is useful. Sooner or later, they’re going to mirror something to you that you’re going to understand, that you previously didn’t understand in that way, you know? There’s no need for competitivity, but a lot of guys have that with their wives and girlfriends, unfortunately. I know that destroyed my [relationship], among other things.

What you’re saying is important because it’s also at the core of collective action in general, just knowing that everyone can come together for the betterment of the whole group.

Yeah. For some people it’s about forcing your way through something and not collaborating. This path is forceful and always from above, and comes crashing below. Maybe there was a time and place for that, but we see that it’s not working. Humanity needs to evolve out of these paradigms. We see how destructive it is. There are Black women, there are Asian women. Women are half of humanity—the oppressed half—and we are diverse. And I think that it’s really bad for man as well, to be put in situations as the crusher. I see men where it doesn’t reflect their reality. So it’s toxic for everybody, and it’s toxic for the planet, as we know. There’s a big lesson to learn. To talk quite simply, it’s about reconnecting to the heart and the sacredness of who we are. We’re not trash, we’re not disposable—we are sacred beings. And now, we’ve been so hypnotized to think we are these objects that can be disposed of. It’s crazy how we’re just normalizing violence and the disposal of human bodies.

I’m thinking of “Trauma Release Makes Free” from last year. You have this line, “Sustained sense of insecurity are not emancipating / they are incapacitating.” I feel like there’s a link there.

This song, actually, was about how Women’s Studies… I felt it was really putting women in front of the reality of how oppressed they’d been. And I’d see my friends who studied it and they’d be absolutely distraught. I’d think, “Oh my god, it’s really not empowering.” But since then, “No, actually, we need to realize how bad things are or have been.” We need to feel that and heal from that. We can’t just pretend it didn’t happen because it’s too fucking hard to hack. Those were the only lyrics in my life that I’ve ever had to change. And it was because I felt that my narrative around this had changed.

The title means that we have to go back there and not fear the energy to take charge of the trauma—which is of course very painful—and release it so you can free yourself, at least partially. That’s the healing journey. My last album is about this, about allowing ourselves to feel what we have to feel. Otherwise, it’s gonna hurt more and more. Our lives are gonna be in such turmoil, collectively. And we have to learn collectively, because a lot of this is collective trauma. And they become programs in our bodies and our psyches that we sinisterly enact. And all programs are not sinister—there are some good ones—but we need to discern what’s governing us, what’s making us act in certain ways, and keep the good stuff that keeps us healthy. And anything toxic, we have to recognize how fucking nasty it is. We have to be aware of those patterns and reprogram them, we have to do the healing.

This is making me think of “Proteiformunite” on the new album. You have this line, which is in French, but it’s talking about “cutting through the poisons of the mind.” I’m only 31, but something I get excited by is knowing that who I am is not set in stone. I have this capacity to continue growing, and I was thinking about that a lot with this album since it is about healing. So I’m wondering, what are the poisons in your mind that you’ve had to cut through? And I’m sure you’ve had stuff in your 20s and 30s, but what has that looked like for you in your 50s?

That’s an immense question, and I’m not sure I’m gonna have enough time to delve into that. But indeed, le poison du mental… it is about this sense of identification that is, as you say, extremely narrow and extremely alienating. It makes us identify with, usually, what makes us suffer. The ego loves suffering. A big part of it is repeating what is already known so we can feel like we have a sense of control. It is delightful that you say this, that there is a lot more to yourself, a lot more to what you’re being defined as. I think that is the path: to take away what we identify with, which is inevitably reductive. There is so much more potential. It’s hard to explain what is exactly at work, but we sense that there is a bigger self in there, something that is so alive and can expand. But then we recognize that we can't because of this and this and this and that and that and that.

It’s just things that we recreate and reproduce. Like, “Man has to go to war. It’s compulsory, that’s how they are.” These are just narratives we have in our heads, and we believe that we have to act like that, and of course it gets reinforced by capitalism. Capitalism acts on all these negative traits that humans have in order to extract profit. It creates needs that we don’t have, it creates all this bullshit that we don’t need.

In our brains, there is no stop for sugar. If you eat at some point, your body says “okay, stop.” For sugar, there isn’t. And for information, there isn’t. Information was very rare at some point. So imagine us, scrolling for hours. There’s nothing that’s gonna tell us to stop unless we think about it or have to be somewhere else. The system is exploiting all these little things—it’s so sophisticated how we’re exploited. And I think it’s really important that we know ourselves. “Know thyself.”

There is one question that I always end my interviews with that I wanted to ask you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

Oh, that’s a good one. (pauses to think). I love that I’m courageous.

Has anything happened recently where you recognized that you were being courageous?

I think I’ve always been, and I think it’s an important part of my work. Even talking to you like this, I disclosed a lot of personal things and I think it takes courage to do that. I don’t know if I trust you, but I have to trust you (laughs). It’s better to trust than to distrust. It’s true—I might be betrayed, and I have been betrayed. But still, if your piece is going to be of any worth, it is by me being open to you. We have to go deep, rapidly. We have to heal. We can’t perpetuate our wounds. Because it’s only when our wounds have healed that we can move on and behave differently, more lovingly towards each other. That’s the goal.

Laeitia Sadier’s new album, Rooting for Love, is out on February 23rd via Drag City. The album can be purchased at the label’s website and at Bandcamp.

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Thank you for reading the 124th issue of Tone Glow. Let’s keep that goal in mind.

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