Interview with the Daisy Dolls

We had the chance to interview 2 singers/musicians part of Daisy Dolls. Let's discover them!

 

Malaurie: Can you please introduce yourselves?

Hello! We are Mathilde and Zoé, 21-year-old French girls living in Vichy. We’ve been playing music together for four years!

 

Malaurie: How did you meet?

We met in an MJC (Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture) in Saint-Germain-des-Fossés.

Mathilde: I already had a music group but when Zoey arrived with her guitar we decided to start singing together and never stopped since! 

Malaurie to Mathilde: 

So you had another band? (yes) and you sang with them too? Yes, exactly. 

Malaurie: When did you create “Daisy Dolls”? 

Four years ago. 

Malaurie: What are the artist and musical genre that inspire you and your creation?

Zoé: We like English bands and songs. Especially Lana Del Rey, The Beatles, Oasis, Fleetwood Mac… We made a lot of covers of their songs when we started. Those are artists are also an inspiration for us now that we are composing our songs, with the lyrics, the melody, etc.  

Malaurie: And any French artists?

Zoé: Pomme is one of our favourite artists. We love her texts, so she is our main source of inspiration. 

Malaurie: Where does “Daisy Dolls” come from?

Mathilde: So we wanted a name with daisy in it. We like this flower and we wanted a flowery name. And for the “dolls” it was my mother's idea. When we started, we were very young and always wearing dresses, skirts, like little princess, or dolls. So my mother suggested we use “dolls”. Here is the origin for Daisy Dolls! 

Malaurie: Mathilde, we saw on your Instagram page that you have a lot of pictures with clothes that look like the ’50s. Is it a stage only wardrobe or is it your everyday style?

Mathilde: is my style when I have enough money to buy those clothes! It’s not for the stage, no. 

Malaurie: And you (Zoé) is it your style as well?

No, no. We have pretty similar dressing style but we try to look different when we are on stage. So our look on stage is a little different from our everyday life. Mathilde will wear dresses and skirts and I will have pants so that we look different. 

Malaurie: What is your first composition?

Mathilde: It’s called Midnight song. It’s in our album named Midnight song. 

Zoé: We named the album after the song because it was our first composition. 

Malaurie: What does the song talked about?

Zoé: It’s a song we wrote when we were teenagers and it's about the turmoil of being young, when we have troubles fitting in and finding your place in society. It’s a song about doubts, about being lost. But the melody is pretty light, so we could think it’s a joyous song, but not really aha. It talks about teenage depression.

Malaurie: Is music (in general) something you’ve enjoyed since you were young or did it come in later in life?

Mathilde: So, first of all, both our parents are musicians so we were raised with music. We both started musical school around nine. Actually we were in the same musical school but we didn’t know! 

Zoé: We met in high school and we realised then that we had the same musical references, the same favourite bands, the same desire when it comes to music.

Malaurie: And in music school you studied guitar?

Mathilde: yes guitar. 

Zoé: No, I learned piano! 

Malaurie: On stage, you play guitar, piano and you sing?

Zoé: No, guitar only! An electric guitar for Mathilde, we also have an acoustic guitar and some drums. 

Malaurie: No piano then?

Zoé: no, no piano. I haven’t played in a while!  

Malaurie: What is your best and worst anecdotes from a concert?

Mathilde: the worst come right to mind. We did a concert four years ago for a sort of festival in the countryside. The stage was big, there was a barbecue, we were accompanied by a drummer and a bass player… We were pretty happy! So we were supposed to play while peoples were eating. And the children started to throw their stuffed animals at us, it was cute at first. Then they threw ROCKS at us… Not a great memory.

Zoé: And if you must know, at the same concert I also forgot my guitar at home. I took my guitar case but it was empty and we were one hour away from our house. So we played with one guitar instead of two! But in my defence we had just started the group, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. 

Malaurie: And the best anecdote then?

Mathilde: there was a festival for crêpes… 

Zoé: oh yes that a good one. Our very first festival in Toulon-sur-Arroux, in Bourgogne. A TV crew from France 3 Bourgogne is here, and want to interview us. They asked us a lot of questions, about our potential album, a lot of other things… We were so happy !!
And then we watched TV, and, as you know, it was a festival about crêpes. At the end of our interview they asked us if we liked crêpes so we said yes and made a few jokes. They only kept us joking about crêpes… But it’s still a good memory. 

Zoé: And also, it’s not a memory from a concert but recently we were contacted (before the lockdown) by the Coopérative de Mai, to maybe do a concert there. And that is a very good memory! When we realised we could play at the Coopérative we were so happy. If we can play there it will definitely be a good—maybe the best—memory from a concert. 

Malaurie: And speaking of the lockdown, how did this health crisis impacted your creativity and your practice?

Mathilde: our creativity is rising up because we wrote a lot of songs in lockdown since we can do any live concert. We try to adapt to this situation, we made videos online.

Zoé: We are “lucky” since our generation has a lot of social media to interact. It’s easier for us to keep our activity alive, and stay in touch with our fans. But also this is not our primary source of income. We don’t live off our group. It’s weird not to have any concert but it's giving us the time to make our social media better: improve our Facebook page, our Instagram, YouTube channel… We also started TikTok! It’s nice! But we do miss live stage. 

Malaurie: And how did you compose? Is it only one of you, do you do it together?

Mathilde: We do it together. Usually what happens is that Zoé is going to write an entire song and then she gives it to me and we try to make it better together, or it's the other way around. We always finish them together. 

Malaurie: Do you prefer writing in English or in French?

Zoé: In English. It's easier to write the lyrics in English. And in a French-speaking country, writing in English is like hiding behind the language: not everybody can understand what you say, so it’s easier to write about personal stuff, it feels less revealing than French. When we started with our song Sorcières, in French, it was really difficult. French is a really beautiful language so we have to do right by it and it can be hard. And since we already listen to a lot of English songs, it’s easier for us, we are more inspired by English to find sentences that works and sound great. 

Malaurie: What feminine artist inspires you the most?

Zoé: The French artist Pomme, but also and most importantly Lana Del Rey, because our common love for her is what brought us together at the beginning. We also love Amy Winehouse, and Taylor Swift with her last albums which are less pop and more folk. It inspired us on our last songs. 

Malaurie: And Pomme inspire you for the lyrics, for what she is talking about?

Mathilde: her songs are poems. They are so beautiful.

Zoé: and by the way she has a song that is called “Sorcières” so we might change the title of our song! 

Malaurie: Did you see Pomme in concert?

Mathilde: Yes, in Clermont, last year. It was amazing.



Zoé: I saw her 3 or 4 years ago, when she was just starting and was the opening of another group. She was amazing, but she evolved a lot since then!

Mathilde: When I saw her it was in the Clermont Ferrand Zenith, a big scene, but it was like we were her friends. The ambiance was really intimate, and it’s something I love and that we try to replicate in our concerts. 

Malaurie: Did you ever witnessed or were victims of sexism in the musical industry? Backstage in a concert, on stage …?

Mathilde and Zoé: Yes…

Zoé: We don’t (hopefully) have gruesome anecdote to share. But it’s latent, it’s everywhere, in the details. Trying to make a name for yourself in the music industry when you are young is difficult. But when you are a young woman… When we are setting up our stage, when we are carrying our instruments and our equipment, we always have comments we didn’t ask for.

Mathilde: When we started (At 15 years old!) One mistake and we had men come and commented things like “you don’t even know how to plug your guitar” … But usually we don’t play with other people and we set up our stage alone.

Zoé: But we can’t set our stage alone without having unsolicited advice. When we are outside setting our equipment it is impossible not to have someone (a man) come up to ask if we need any help. Impossible not to get checked out by man.

Mathilde: Sometime they take stuff out of our hands saying, “you can’t lift that, I’ll do it”. And most of the time this sexism we are facing does not come from people in the music industry, people here to play. It comes from the audience, people that came to see us! 

Sometimes they come to see us say things like “I prefer the blonde”; “this one sings better”; or “you need a manager, I’ll manage your money for you ».

Zoé: Yes and after sending us messages at 4 am saying, “I watched your video you should change that, do that” … Or even we had people come over to tell us our outfits were not appropriate! Saying that in the middle of summer, during a heat wave, we should wear jeans and not shorts. 

Mathilde: At every concert we have comments about our physics, which one did they prefer, they talked about what we wear… All the time.

Zoé: We don’t have aggressive people in front of us, but there is always this kind of ambiance where we know what comments we’re going to receive.

*at this point, every single one of us present during the interview argue that those comments could be perceived as violent.* 

Malaurie: How do you respond to all those comments?

Zoé: Well, this answer is not going to satisfy any of you but a lot of the time all the comments and the attitude stop when my father or Mathilde's father or our boyfriend are around. A masculine presence is needed for that to stop. 

Malaurie: And does it piss you off? Needing men? Do you want to respond to them yourself?

Mathilde and Zoé: We do it. We do it more often now.

Mathilde: At first we didn’t respond because we were young. We didn’t know what to say and we thought when we received messages online that it was nice because they listened to our music. Now, it’s different. We don’t respond anymore because it's annoying and it hurt us in the past.

Zoé: And it’s sad, too. If we can now answer those comments, it's because we received so many of them that we are sick and tired of hearing them. We are angry and that’s why we can answer. 

Malaurie: And this anger, did you ever consider expressing it via songs?

Mathilde and Zoé: yes.

Matilde: It’s coming. We have reached a peak of anger! To give you an example there is a guy that we didn’t know, who wanted to be our manager. We turn him down and he started to sell our discs without our permission!

Zoé: We woke up one day, opened Facebook and saw something like “If you want a disc for Daisy Dolls, send a check to my address and I will see with them” but he did this without consulting us. We didn’t press charges, but we asked him to stop. We had other fish to fry and it was annoying because it gave us extra things to take care of. Actually, it’s annoying because I feel like men always have the impression that women are some fragile creature that need to be guided. No thank you!

Mathilde: And we are not really making money with our group. I mean it’s not really a business we play in bars… I can’t imagine what it's like for women making money off of it.

Zoé: Men need to realise that women are capable of taking care of themselves alone, capable of knowing what they want and where they want to go.

 

Malaurie: Well, thank you for this testimony. And to finish this interview, what are your future projects?

Mathilde: We actually have a project with Solène (another student in the master)! We wrote some song during the lockdown, and there is one of those songs that we really like. We are going to record it the 13th of April, and then we want to make a video clip with Solène D’Argy here!

 

Malaurie: Where did you record your songs? In Vichy?

In the studio 36 in Vichy with Stefan Colomb. He is following us from the start and we’ve always worked with him.

 

Malaurie: Thank you for your time! We can’t wait to hear your songs and see your video clip. 

Interview:Malaurie Patural
Questions: Malaurie Patural, Charline Gautier, Lisa Dubreuil
Transcript: Lisa Dubreuil

Daisy Dolls : Mathilde Lemaire and Zoé Barge