“Marcia, she dances on satin, rayon/Expanded polystyrene at her feet/Marcia dances with legs/Sharp like cleavers/Two arrows that give ideas/Sensations…” With Fred Chichin, her double, her musician Catherine Ringer sang, in her psychedelic way, her vision of madness or rather of a drunken dance that resembled her.
The Rita Mitsouko, in a style that mixed rock, punk and it must be said a poetry that “smiled and loved life so much”, gave those over and under twenty years old songs that made them dance like crazy. In homage to the singer Catherine Ringer, Le Figaro has concocted an anthology of her historic titles from the 1980s, from Marcia Baïla to Le Petit Train via Andy, with as a bonus, the duet with Marc Lavoine, Qu’est-ce que t’es belle. And it’s true, that she was, and her titles too, of a beauty as sharp as an ax.
Marcia Baïla (1984)
The founding song. Written after the death of the Argentinian dancer Marcia Moretto, Marcia Baïla transforms a funeral tribute into a pop ritual of striking energy. Catherine Ringer's voice is already theatrical, cut up, panicked, capable of going from confidence to cry. The chorus, the percussion, the angular guitar and the strangeness of the text placed Rita Mitsouko off the beaten track: neither quite rock, nor variety, nor new wave. This remains a manifesto.
It's Like That (1986)
Catherine Ringer imposes an electric casualness here. The piece is based on a formula of refusal: no explanation, no excuse, no moral. His diction plays on attack and provocation. Fred Chichin builds a sensual and electric mechanism around her. At a time when French pop sometimes favors conformism, Rita Mitsouko assumes a jubilant sophistication.
Andy (1986)
Andy is one of the great French songs about desire and ambiguity, without demonstrative speech. Ringer describes a character whose identity escapes assignment, with a sensuality that is both frontal and light. The title is striking for its groove and its construction, but above all for the absence of judgment in the interpretation: Catherine Ringer does not judge Andy. He has to say yes, and that’s it.
The Stories of A. (1987)
It’s perhaps the duo’s most elegant song. A love song, but unhinged: the initial A leaves open the identity of the desired being, while the melody envelops words made of lack, waiting and trouble. Catherine Ringer doesn't force anything. His voice becomes more flexible, almost restrained, and this reserve gives the piece its gravity.
The Little Train (1988)
Le Petit Train sums up the art of Rita Mitsouko: an everyday situation, a seemingly simple text, then a surge of anxiety and fantasy. Catherine Ringer plays a traveler caught in the movement of the world, between impatience, desire to escape and worry. But the song reveals a much darker reality in a bouncy tune: an evocation of the deportee trains of the Second World War. An intimate allusion too: Sam Ringer, the singer's father, was deported and interned in several camps.
How beautiful are you (1988)
Recorded with Marc Lavoine in 1988, deserves a special place. It is not the peak of the Ringer-Chichin invention, but it is one of the great duets of French variety: a scene of seduction where the brutal frankness of Catherine Ringer permanently thwarts conventional romanticism.
From the revolutionary originality of Marcia Baïla to the troubled grace of Histoires d'A., Catherine Ringer carried Rita Mitsouko with a unique voice: carnal, ironic, sometimes heartbreaking. With Fred Chichin, she made French pop a territory of freedom.
