RFI Musique: Your new album opens with Bien mérité, a song defending the rights of "les sans-papiers" (illegal immigrants with no work visas). It's unusual for you to do such a politically committed song…
Clarika: Yes, I know. This is the first time I've ever taken such a political stance in a song. That doesn't mean I didn't have personal convictions before, though, it's just that I got my message across in a more indirect way, putting my words into my characters' mouths. My kids go to school in Belleville [a multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Paris] and we mix with a lot of families who are having terrible problems because they don't have work papers. It's an issue I've cared about for a long time. I'm someone who writes about things close to me and it seemed completely natural to talk about the problem in a song. There's another song on the new album - Moi en mieux - which is the exact opposite, though. It's about voting green but still taking two baths a day! I think that balances things out a bit!

Florent Marchet wrote the music for a track on your last album, Joker, and this time round he co-produced Moi en mieux with your regular collaborator Jean-Jacques Nyssen. What did Florent Marchet bring to your album?
Well, this time round we decided to fill the sound out a bit and take a few liberties. This was not your classic recording schema where we went into the studio and trotted out one track after another. Jean-Jacques and Florent had time to experiment. We had heaps of instruments in the studio with us and it was a bit like being in a sound laboratory with the guys recording and experimenting at the same time. I think that's what gives the new album its richness and depth. We were able to come up with finely-honed arrangements because we took our time over things.

Musically speaking, your new album sounds a bit more serious than usual. This is not the jaunty, tongue-in-cheek Clarika we've known up to now…
That's maturity for you! Fifteen years have gone by between the recording of my first album and my fifth. It's natural for people to change in that time and I'm obviously not writing the same kind of songs as before. It's not that I feel more serious as a person, but I do feel I've done my share of lightweight in the past! I actually like the contrast between the two. I'm someone who can be really superficial one minute and all serious and introspective the next. Besides, I wasn't interested in doing an album that rehashed the same old formulas. 

I know you write all your own lyrics, but what role do you play in the composition and arrangements?
Well, I'm very good at telling people what I don't want!  I know what I like, but I'm not necessarily good at translating that into music. I put everything in Jean-Jacques' and Florent's hands and trusted them completely.

Your album ends with an epic track entitled L’ennui…
I turned up in the studio one day with five sheets of lyrics and announced to Jean-Jacques and Florent that they had to keep absolutely everything in. They co-wrote the music for L'ennui together coming up with the brilliant idea of doing a western. All three of us love film music and we listened to a lot of  John Barry scores while we were recording.

You've already touched on the theme of boredom before in a duet with Tom Poisson…
The song with Tom was about lovers getting bored in a relationship. This is more about ennui as a complete sense of emptiness. I'm someone who never gets bored, but I'm capable of sitting around doing nothing. As a singer, I often have that luxury in life. I think it's important, even for kids, to learn not to do too much. I'm completely opposed to the ideology of a programme like "Star Academy" where they work everyone to death. Work for me is not about the time you put in, but about coming up with good ideas. When I was 18 I had a job in McDonald's and I remember this manager turning round to me and saying "Can you go and mop the floor now?" I told him I'd just done it, and he said "Well, now you can go and do it again - that'll stop you standing around thinking!" That's why politicians are keen on us working longer hours - it'll stop us all thinking!

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 Listen to an extract from Bien mérité

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