On her left cheekbone, Aime Simone got the word tattooed “reckless” (“reckless” in English). A gesture that could be attributed to a self-destructive radicalism, to a desire for social isolation or, in a musician, to the greed of noisy anger. “This tattoo was actually a way of turning my back on years of doubt and fear, a way of proclaiming that I would now do something creative with my life, by jumping into the water with recklessness”, explains with conviction this English-speaking French singer, whose first two albums, Say Yes, Say No (2020) and the recent Oh Glory, transform the spleen into luminous refrains.
By marrying the delicate sensitivity of a guitar and a voice to the stripping down of machines, his intimate “post-pop” led him to the hit, the aptly named Shining Light, and a tour that passes this summer by fifteen festivals.
At the end of June, between two concerts, we do not meet a single individual, but a couple. Sitting opposite him, his wife and artistic director, the American Sonja Fix, accompanies him. Not to control a speech, but to prolong, with benevolence, a fusional complicity. “Composition, production, images… We do everything together, in total autonomy”, insists the slender singer, dressed in an elegant white tracksuit and his neck adorned with massive necklaces. “Sonja was the first to understand the deep melancholy behind my festive appearance. The creative alchemy was immediate, from our first meeting, in Vienna, in 2017.”
Converted to pop
Asked about this love at first sight, the young woman gently clarifies the enthusiastic memory of her companion: “First we had to survive. Every day was a challenge. » At the time, the slope was tough to go up for a boy who was not yet called Aime Simone, marked by too many depressive whirlwinds.
Ill-being and bad encounters undermine an adolescence spent in the 11e district of Paris. Violence and petty crime disrupt his school career. Just as episodes of anorexia mess up his health. “When I had decided to finally devote myself seriously to literary studies, a back operation came to ruin everything”, he says.
His passion for music offers no miracle cure. Child of rap, Aime Simone had converted to pop writing after a stay in Norway, in his maternal family, where uncle, cousins and cousins liked to ritually cover songs from the Beatles. “It turned my head and made me want to play the guitar”, he confides. He will dig this furrow of sixties melodists, then of their descendants of Britpop (Oasis, Blur…).
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