Already at the top of French pop, the thirty-year-old continues her flawless performance with an album full of potential hits.
After a first album of romantic breakup, unpinned by In Grenada (Sainte-Victoire, 2018), then a discoid tidal wave (Heart, 2021), both crowned with quadruple platinum (400,000 copies), how was the singer from Martigues going to find inspiration, in the face of so much critical praise and dizzying public success?
“This life is even better since she crossed paths with yours”, Clara Luciani sings in the orchestral overture of This life, which sets both the tempo and the theme of a largely autobiographical record, constantly intertwining her artistic, family, sentimental and now maternal lives on 13 tracks – a lucky number for the one who appears frontally and without artifice on the cover of My blood.
A rollercoaster between intimate ballads and radio steamrollers
Absolutely unstoppable in its timed pop format and already counting among the biggest potential hits of its author’s career, This life also serves as an ideal gateway to this third album. The single Everything for me openly discusses her motherhood and her son (“You are dynamite in my flat calm/Before you I almost didn’t exist”) while Romance, piano-voice ballad revealed simultaneously as a B side, leads towards the other, introspective side of My blood.
In this roller coaster-shaped disc (“rollercoaster” quoted in the words of Everything for me) and emotional lift, Clara Luciani never forgets where she comes from, as she tells it bluntly in Come on (from his first hesitant steps to the Olympia).
Always surrounded by Ambroise Willaume (Sage, Astral Bakers) and Pierrick Devin on arrangements and production, the thirty-year-old with fringe has abandoned the disco revival for plural pop. As a tribute to her deceased idol Françoise Hardy, who often sang of friendship, Clara Luciani also expresses herself on this fertile feeling, even if it is sometimes painful (Friend’s sorrow against a backdrop of celestial choirs).
Enter college rock (Come on, designed for stadiums) and danceable pop (Rolled in a radio steamroller, Too bad which would not have mismatched on Sainte-Victoire alongside Nue), the album keeps up the frantic pace of the rollercoaster. “I carry my house on my back/My songs, my child on my back”, she recognizes, guitar slung over her shoulder and her voice hectic, in Courage, before writing a moving letter to his mother in a double mirror effect (My mother, very Hardyesque too).
And if a final duo with the Francophile Rufus Wainwright (Forget Me Not) – while waiting for the one with his other idol Paul McCartney? – punctuates this third album, both remarkable and without much surprise, Clara Luciani already seems to be moving towards a new popular recognition. For a winning triple copy.
My blood (Romance Music/Universal). Released November 15. In concert at the Olympia, Paris, on December 17 and 18, on French tour from January 18, 2025 and March 6 at the Accor Arena, Paris.
