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Eclusive interview with Sébastien Tellier, headliner of the We Love Green festival
Behind his dark glasses, the French singer-songwriter has always polished his image. Now 50, the disillusioned kid with the glamourous touch is back with a new album. At once grandiose and intimate, Kiss the Beast lines up a prestigious cast that includes Victor Le Masne, SebastiAn, Nile Rodgers, Kid Cudi, and Oscar Holter, who has worked with The Weeknd. With its biting electro and luminous orchestration, the 12-track opus veers between pop odyssey and nighttime jaunt. Interview with the headliner of the 2026 We Love Green festival in Paris.
By Alexis Thibault.
Published on 2 February 2026. Updated on 4 June 2026.
Sébastien Tellier’s bewitching creative and musical world
As far back as he can remember, Sébastien Tellier always imagined becoming a toymaker. Not to produce plastic rubbish, obviously, but beautiful pieces full of charm, as was still the case in the 1980s. This was the dream he nursed in his council flat in a damp and distant suburb in the Val-d’Oise. In photos taken at the time, he pulls a face and plays the sad child, a blackbird on his shoulder.
Later, the mood brightened thanks to video games, skateboarding, and a BMX, which he learned to ride well without ever becoming brilliant. As adolescence set in, so did an unfailing rejection of authority, a tenacious mouse phobia, and a growing taste for music. Sébastien Tellier slowly transformed into a tall young man with a big bushy beard, a glamorous werewolf who sang like he was reciting fables while swirling a fine wine in his glass.
Kiss the Beast, Sébastien Tellier’s new album
Since his first studio album, L’Incroyable Vérité (2001), his music has always spoken of love. Inspired by his assumptions – as though he felt authorized to talk about life without being an expert in anything – his flamboyant world mixes the rhymes of a Paul Éluard, the weird chic of a Bertrand Mandico, and the sonorous tales of a Sergei Prokofiev. He draws his characters with dashes of colour, costume, and motif, from the tender ogre to the bashful braggart.
Twenty-two years after La Ritournelle, a cult track composed with the legendary drummer Tony Allen, he’s back with one of his most accomplished albums yet. Halfway through our interview, he even removed his dark glasses, revealing beneath the signature mask a pair of eyes not mournful, but laughing. Interview.
Sébastien Tellier’s unfiltered universe
Numéro: Do you often cry?
Sébastien Tellier: I’ve cried an awful lot in my life. But you stop doing it when you have kids, because the captain must always stand firm. Now I only allow myself to cry over invented things – the fictitious sadness portrayed by a movie actor or the outrageous chagrin of a love song…
Which personality flaw do those close to you agree on?
I’m a lazy stay-at-home. No doubt because I spend my time singing about forest walks and Biarritz in the summer, people always complain that all I want to do is stay home with the curtains drawn. I’m an impostor – don’t hate me for it! All my thinking is based on impressions; I never researched the subjects I chose. I’m a specialist in distant impressions. Some consider ignorance a shortcoming, but I think it’s a wonderful strength that allows you to dream better.
“Some consider ignorance a shortcoming, but I think it’s a wonderful strength that allows you to dream better.” – Sébastien Tellier
Is that why you whisper your lyrics, because you’re not sure anything you’re saying is true?
You don’t get to choose your voice, I’m afraid. I have the one that came with my body, not Pavarotti’s. I’ve always wanted success, while hating those who shout to gain attention. So I try to do it softly – there’s no need to yell. I long hoped that divine grace would allow me to write a good song. Over time, I became a perfectionist with no expectations, as though I no longer had the patience to wait for that brilliant brainwave. Now, at last, I dominate my music, where before it was the other way round.
Your new album, Kiss the Beast, is at once grandiose and intimate. Why are you proud of it?
Because I don’t have much time left to produce something as good as what my heroes did… The problem, you see, is that my generation grew up with Gainsbourg, who had already won the game hands down. The only way out was to try to do something else. So I sing these naïve little lyrics about themes that don’t really interest me. My music is a mix of Taxi Driver and Beauty and the Beast directed by Brian De Palma. As for this new album, it’s a night of madness, an attempt to tame the chaos, a week’s vacation in an abandoned theme park.
“Suffering remains the best fuel for the flame of art.” – Sébastien Tellier
One of the tracks, Copycat, is about the trauma you felt when a man usurped your identity. Must one suffer to become a true artist?
Let’s say that suffering remains the best fuel for the flame of art. You generally don’t have much urge to create when everything’s going well. To be an artist, you must feel the need to run away and scream. I spent a long time trying to abandon the child I’d been and to reinvent myself. Art is a succession of problems to solve. And as artists, we persuade ourselves that all it takes is a good song to sort everything out.
Are you ever afraid of becoming corny?
There are plenty of people ahead of me in the queue for that particular precipice… In any case, I’ve always made old people’s music – a little bit erudite with a lot of long instrumental passages. I didn’t win over my audience thanks to my dance routines. My grandfather was a boxer. He had a lot of class and glamour, grandpa Henry. Like him, I’ve always sought to appeal through my outfits, because style is like music, a question of balance. Beyond taste, I go for what works. Who cares about taste – you need to go where it feels good!
Kiss the Beast (2026) by Sébastien Tellier, out now. The artist will be performing at We Love Green on June 5th, 2026.
