Rising French Pop Star on the Rise Thérèse is breaking down boundaries with her debut EP “Rêvalité“
In her new debut EP “Rêvalité” she features the recently released single and Chinoise? which sees Thérèse blurring different music genres, breaking common stereotypes around Asians using pervasive popular cliches while mixing French-influenced hip-hop, electro-pop, and samples of traditional Chinese instruments including Pipa and Rubab, an Afghan instrument widely used in the Xinjiang province of northwest China. Using six different languages – French, English, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Arabic – to express her often political lyrics.
The EP title, Rêvalité, explains Thérèse; is a word I invented, a mix between “rêve” (= dream) and “réalité” (= reality) and also a mix between “rêve” (= dream) and “alité” (= bedridden). It perfectly represents the surreal Covid19 pandemic life, during which humanity has been floating between a dream (or a nightmare) and real life. Even if the themes of the songs are quite strong, the word Rêvalité sounds hopeful, as the aim of this EP is to encourage people to face reality in order to be aware and ready to re-build our future.
Thérèse has established herself as a figure of empowerment in the French-Asian community. “Chinoise?” is the follow up to her debut single “T.O.X.I.C”, which has seen the talented artist being selected for the 2021 Société Pernod Ricard France Live Music Prize, the prize sets out in search of the very best in the independent French music scene.
As an activist, she has been fighting racism especially towards French Asians through her music and social media platforms, more recently COVID-19 fuelled the flames of anti-Asian sentiment in France with prejudice and racist slurs shocking the country’s Asian community. French Asians have been fighting back using the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I’m not a virus), through her work with anti-racists associations such as Décolonisons Nous and Stop Asiaphobie, Thérèse has become one of their most radical voices on national French media, appearing on daytime TV shows including Quotidien on TMC/TF1 and Info du vrai on Canal +.
One day she decided to switch and draw her own career path, as Missy Elliott recently said as long as you are breathing, its never too late… That’s the motto I want to follow, she enthuses. Now she splits her time between music, styling for other French music artists including Sônge, and brands such as Nuxe and Fête Impériale, as well as modelling for empowering French labels Ysé and Superbe.
