The singer of this French group who has been working for ten years to make intelligent dancing justifies her departure by artistic disagreements but also psychological exhaustion. And in the process points out a “toxic” industry.
France Télévisions – Culture Editorial
Published on 09/27/2024 6:24 p.m. Updated on 09/27/2024 6:29 p.m.
Reading time: 2 mins
The author and singer of the group L’Impératrice Flore Benguigui, at the Coachella festival (California, United States), April 19, 2024. (ARTURO HOLMES / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA)
Flore Benguigui, author and delicious singer of L’Impératrice, this French disco-pop group that the world envies, is abandoning ship. She announced it Thursday September 26 on her Instagram account, after a series of festival dates, and on the eve of an international tour to defend their third album Pulsarreleased in June.
In a long message, the singer talks about “deep personal and artistic disagreements” with the five other members of the sextet to explain this departure, “fruit of long and painful reflection”. But she also and above all speaks of physical and psychological exhaustion about which she says she has sounded the alarm several times, in vain.
Today, “leaving this project into which I had put all my soul and energy for 9 years is (…) the only way to protect my health, physical and mental, which has been very seriously damaged in recent years”she writes.
Mixture of funk, disco and pop, with lyrics of rare finesse (intelligent and funny, this is not so common for music that makes the hips roll) by Flore Benguigui, as Fear of girlsa feminist anthem full of humor, L’Impératrice is a French group better known abroad than at home.
Scheduled three times (including one Covid year) at the prestigious Californian Coachella festival, including during the last one in April 2024, he begins an international tour at the end of October, many dates of which have been sold out for months, such as in London, New York, Montreal or Seattle.
With this departure, Flore Benguigui, who launched monthly evenings last year to highlight women in the world of music, also claims to question the functioning of the music industry which she judges “toxic and unfair, especially towards women, towards victims, towards mental health.” An industry which, according to this assumed hyper-sensitive, “prefers to capitalize on the sensitivity of artists to win this blind and frantic race for success, rather than truly taking care of it.”
However, she tempers her remarks by paying tribute to the group, to their “label, turner, distributor, and all the people who worked with us, for everything they taught me over 9 years.”
The Empress plans to continue her journey and her world tour with another singer, complete Flore Benguigui, who, after having considered throwing in the towel for a while, now wishes “keep singing and writing songs.” But at his own pace.
