Interview Kids Return — a melancholic French pop duo
“Our music really is an extension of how we think and the way we see the world”. I met the band Kids Return for the release of their new track Orange Mountains on October 27, 2021. Adrien Rozé, tireless creator of melodies and Clément Savoye, creative engine full of ideas form a complementary, poetic and irresistibly friendly duo.
They have been friends and musicians since high school. Adrien and Clément fell in love with the aesthetic and musical universe of filmmaker Takeshi Kitano and created the band Kids Return after watching the film of the same name a year ago, while doing the lockdown in a house in the mountains together. Motivated by a deep mutual understanding and a desire to create music that directly touches the heart and body, the duo, once reunited, exploded with a young, obvious and romantic creative energy and created their first songs with a melancholic and dreamy tone: Melody, Our Love and Orange Mountains. Somewhat unsatisfied with the categorizations that reduce and label music in a sometimes irrelevant way, Adrien and Clément define their music as “organic pop inspired by the music of the 1960s and the French Touch of the 2000s”. From Japanese cinema to Tame Impala’s memorable concert at We Love Green and the influences of The Beatles, Blur and Sons of Raphael, we chatted with Clément and Adrien about music, a trip to a desert island with John Lennon or Paul McCartney, the musical and social revolution of the 1960s, their creative process, inspirations and future projects.
At the end of this interview, Adrien and Clément will answer the “NOW YOU CHOOSE” questions: I asked them 2 questions every time and they chose the one wanted to answer to.
- How are you doing?
Great, we just came back from 3 days of concerts in Paris, Nyon and Troyes. We’re doing everything at the same time: music, driving, concerts, so we are a little tired but very happy!
2. Can you introduce yourselves?
Clément: If you want, I introduce Adrien and Adrien introduces me. His name is Adrien, he is very talented, he makes music with me. Our band is called Kids Return. We met 10 years ago, we were in the same school and we were both making music. One year ago we decided that we absolutely wanted to make music together. What’s great with Adrien is that he comes up with melodies every 2 minutes. He sings, he composes and he’s handsome, so it’s cool.
Adrien: This is Clément, 24 years old, in addition to being brilliant and very talented, he is a hard worker. We’ve been friends since high school, we’ve always talked about music and made music together. We wanted to combine our strengths to do what we both liked the most.
3. How did music come into your lives?
Clément: When I was quite young, my uncle made me listen to my first pop records and the Beatles… My parents listened more to jazz, French songs and classical music. I also had an incredible babysitter who was very friends with the BB Brunes. She used to create great compilations for me with the Arctic Monkeys, the Strokes and a lot of artists that inspire us a lot today.
Adrien: It’s funny, it’s also my uncle who introduced me to a lot of music when I was 12, like the Beatles and Pink Floyd, who he was passionate about. He had a band when he was our age. In college, I started collecting CDs, there was a collective emulation within my friends, we listened and started to make a lot of music.
Clément: We have a circle of friends that has remained the same since we were teenagers. We make movies, music, we are a family. Our friends make the videos of our music and we make the music of their films. There is a small scene that is being built right now, that we are completely a part of.
4. Why are you called “Kids Return”?
Clément: We love telling this story! What’s great is that finding the name “Kids Return” is actually what started the group. We were at Adrien’s house during the lockdown and he set up a dynamic that consisted of watching a lot of good movies and cooking a lot of good food. We watched Takeshi Kitano movies, including Kids Return. The next day, I told Adrien “If we create a band, we’ll call ourselves Kids Return”. He stopped playing and said “Great idea, let’s go”. At that time, we were involved in other projects, it was incredible how finding this name helped us to unlock ourselves and understand that everything was possible.
5. How does your duo work?
Clément: Adrien often comes up with a first idea, chords or a vocal melody, then we discuss it and it can go in all directions. What is interesting is to think about a song, to develop it according to what we want to express and what moves us. The process is different for each track.
Adrien: It never happens that we have no idea for a song and we just sit in front of a keyboard, take a guitar and look for an idea just like that, while jamming. That will probably happen to us in the future. So far, the music we’ve created has been done like that: I often propose the first pure emotion of a melody that moves us both, then Clément brings an impulse and we arrange the song together. For example, for Melody, I had the melody in my head and I didn’t know how to make the track sound, nor what color to give it. Clément came up with a lot of ideas and we did the arrangements together.
Clément: We are very complementary in the composition and also in all the other aspects of the group. We make independent production, so we do everything the 3 of us, with our manager.
Link to Melody live music video and to the live session of Our Love at the Motorbass Studio
6. Do you have the same musical tastes?
Clément: We haven’t always listened to exactly the same thing at the same times in our lives, but we love the same things overall. When we do blind tests in the car and listen to each other’s songs, we always agree. It happens once every 600 songs that we don’t agree, when it happens, it‘s funny.
7. How would you define your music?
Adrien: This is the most difficult question of all! I feel like it‘s a bit artificial to put the music in categories, like pop.
Clément: If we want to create a category, we can say that it’s organic pop that mixes the music of the 1960s-1970s and the French Touch of the 2000s. Some people tell us that our music sounds like the Beatles, others like Air, others like Daft Punk with the voice of the singer of MGMT. What is sure is that it is not urban music.
8. What is your approach when you create music?
Clément: We are extremely sincere. Before, it could happen that we watched ourselves playing sometimes, but today, our music is really an extension of our way of thinking and seeing the world.
Adrien: We make music to move people, but we don’t study the music market. We don’t apply some kind of magic recipes to have success.
Clément: I’d rather release a song that people don’t like very much but that I believe in very deeply, than to defend a song that I don’t believe in but that was a hit because it combines a certain number of codes. Now, we are super happy, when we play, we have a lot of emotions and it’s obvious, no matter the size of the audience.
9. What are your sources of inspiration?
Adrien: At the beginning, we were very inspired by Takeshi Kitano’s movies, his very elegant Japanese universe and the soundtracks of his movies, it’s even the name of our band!
Clément: We were almost psychopaths talking about him all the time! He’s still a big influence, but the influences have widened.
Adrien: Cinema is a very important source of inspiration. We wer every inspired by western movies with wide open spaces and adventure films from the 1970s for the Orange Mountains video. As far as music is concerned, we listen to a lot of bands from the 1960s, like the Beatles, the Mamas and Papas, the Zombies, and also other bands like Pink Floyd and Air.
Clément: We listen to a lot of different things, we are very open. The bands that Adrien mentioned inspire us not only in their melodies, but also in the way they produce their records. We make our music in a different way than most people today. We try to compose and produce music in the same way as in the past, to find a grain, a particular sound, while creating modern tracks.
10. Why do the 1960s and 1970s inspire you?
Adrien: The 1960s really marked the beginning of pop music. At that time, musicians had access to incredible material and instruments. There was also a kind of sincerity in the lyrics of the songs. In the 1970s, this momentum became a little more precise, with bands like Fleetwood Mac who are really amazing.
Clément: Like at the beginning of any new movement, there is something very authentic. Back then, there was a lot less music instruments and material available than today, but it was of incredible quality. The woods used were of very good quality, the humidity was different. There was also at that time an important political movement that focused on music with an immense sincerity. Also, form and content were very much linked in the music. The only way to make music was to gather musicians to play live in a studio. The sound wasn’t perfect, but something was happening, which has become rare today in recorded music. There wasn’t this concept of home studio. We force ourselves to go to the studio, but it’s not the usual way of doing things today.
11. During the creative process and when you produce music, does it often happen that your initial idea for a track changes completely?
Clément: Yes, completely, the content and the form are very linked in our music. We keep in mind the basic melody, but then the music composition is in permanent relation with the way we produce. A sound can influence us and make us go in different directions. For certain tracks, we have an initial vision that we keep, for others, we go with the flow.
Clément: We need to physically touch the instruments, we can’t make music with a computer. If we were in a studio in a basement with a computer, we would make the worst album of the year.
12. Can tell us more about your new song Orange Mountains?
Clément: The song was composed in the Pyrenees. It’s a melody that Adrien had in mind for a long time and that we tried to play in many different ways. The whole track is led by a harpsichord melody. We composed the track in a unique context in the mountains, surrounded by eagles.
Clément: The song and the music video are about the personal struggle that is a breakup, the time that passes between the moment when the breakup is very painful and the moment when you want to move on and you are feeling better alone. The song explores how hate can help you move forward, but with moderation. Going through this kind of difficult moment puts you physically and mentally in very special moods and provokes strong emotions. Music is a way to move forward. Everybody knows that when you are sad you make better songs than when you are happy in your life!
13. What is your most memorable stage experience?
Adrien: The first concert in Paris we did recently was sold out. Can you imagine, it was our first concert in Paris, and it was sold out, so we were really happy. We played at the Pop-Up du Label, there were all our relatives and a lot of people we didn’t know. The atmosphere was super electric!
Clément: In the audience, there was a mix of our old friends, our family and the first fans. It was very intense.
14. What are your future projects?
Clément: We’re spending time in the studio, recording and touring as much as possible. The goal is to continue to make songs and concerts!
INTERVIEW KIDS RETURN, NOW YOU CHOOSE: I asked 2 questions, Clément and Adrien chose which one they wanted to answer to.
1. Your dream collaboration? // Your dream scene to play at?
Clément and Adrien: It’s very difficult, we have to think about the 2 answers at the same time! Our dream scene would be Coachella around 9:30 pm.
2. A time (past or future) when you would like to live at? // A place (real or imaginary) where you would like to live in?
Adrien: I would have liked to be 20 years old between 1965 and 1975.
Clément: Exactly, we would have been born just after the war so we would have been in our twenties in the middle of the sixties and we’d be partying. In the England or the USA?
Adrien: In the USA, in New York, so I would have become friends with Lou Reed.
3. A song you’ll never get tired of? // Your latest musical discovery that you listen to all the time?
Adrien: That’s too difficult! There is a song that I’ve always listened to and I’ll never get tired of it, it’s The Fall by Rhye. I think it’s incredible, it always moves me the same way.
Clément: Girls & Boys by Blur always gives me a boost, I can listen to it all the time: in the middle of a party, alone in the street, at 3 o’clock in the morning, it is so well produced that it gives me an incredible energy. I also listen very often to I Live for You by George Harrison.
4. You don’t have to choose the question this time, but you still have to make a choice: if you could have dinner with 3 people, living or dead, fictional or real, who would it be and why?
Clément: First, we would invite John Lennon, I have some questions to ask him.
Adrien: John Lennon, Ennio Moricone and someone who has nothing to do with them but who is an expert, for example Truffaut.
Clément: Now that you’ve said that, John Lennon might be a fun killer. So I would chose Alex Turner or Julian Casablancas, I’m very interested in talking with a musician that is super successful today. With Alex Turner, Truffaut, Ennio Moricone, the dinner would be incredible.
What would you prepare for dinner?
Clément: A pasta dish, a good Tuscan recipe.
Adrien: Ennio Moricone might be intense on the pasta.
Clément: He will put pressure, but we won’t disappoint him. Good pasta with veal ragout and good French red wine.
5. If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing? // What job could you never do?
Clément: If I had to be in an office with a precise schedule, I would very easily have a mental breakdown. I think I would create my own restaurant or I would be a cook.
Adrien: I would be a film director. It’s hard to answer the question “What job could I never do?”
Clément: You couldn’t be a math teacher.
Adrien: It’s impossible, I couldn’t do it! If I persevered, I might be able to be a math teacher for an elementary school class at the age of 40, that’s terrible.
6. What is your biggest dream? // What is your biggest fear?
Clément: We’re optimistic, so we’ll talk about our biggest dream. Our biggest dream would be to make an album that people sincerely love, that makes us tour all over the world with an audience that comes to see us because they understand our record and sincerely love our music. After that, we could make the album we want because people would trust us. We want to live this emotion, we don’t need to play in huge stadiums everywhere in the world.
Adrien: Exactly, to make the music we deeply love, all your life long.
Clément: It would be amazing to experience this at least once.
7. What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to? // What concert do you want to go to?
Clément: We went together to see Tame Impala at We Love Green (festival in Paris), it was a huge shock. We love this band a lot, we were expecting a very good concert because everybody told us it was an incredible experience, but to be honest, we wanted to cry, we thought “what is this tornado?”
Adrien: It was the best sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Everything was perfect, the lights were magnificent, the stage exploded with colors and confetti in all directions, the musicians played incredibly well and there was an insane emotion. On top of that, the context was incredible, it was a warm Parisian night in Paris in June.
Clément: It was the perfect concert.
8. Imagine that you are going to a deserted island, and you can only take one piece of art or one person with you that will inspire you to create, what do you choose: the piece of art, or the person?
Clément: I would take a person with me rather than a piece of art, because this person can inspire you in his or her work and also in his or her career and life choices.
Adrien: Paul McCartney, he’s a genius, he created the Beatles in 7 years and he looks like the nicest grandfather on earth.
Clément: I’m hesitating, because among the Beatles, Paul McCartney is the one whose music I liked the least after the Beatles. In terms of musical career, I would take Damon Albarn, he is very impressive, he created Blur and then Gorillaz.
Adrien: I don’t agree, for me Paul McCartney is so much more impressive than Damon Albarn. In the Beatles music, everything is good from A to Z and Paul McCartney is the craziest and most inspiring person on earth, he guided the Beatles. I’m hesitating with John Lennon who brought magic to the band, so it’s pretty hard to choose.
Clément: Let’s say, the one between John Lennon and Paul McCartney who agrees to come to the island.
9. Last question, discovery topic: in your opinion, who is the artist who deserves a bigger success?
Clément: Sons of Raphael is the last band produced by Philippe Zdar. What they do is really incredible.
Adrien: With Clément we are also big fans of Michael Franks. His music is very well produced, very elegant and he brings a crazy emotion when he sings.
Interview by Emma Renaudin in October 2021
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