On a lucky day in October 2017, Adèle Couvert and Robin Douady crossed paths. She was 17 years old, he was 15. Both were passionate about music, with a soft spot for writing lyrics and acoustic guitar. They met taking classes at Voiron’s music conservatory, near Grenoble, in the South-East of France. Soon after, they started performing together in cafés, sharing the stage, but never the creative process. “There needs to be a certain level of trust to write a song with someone, and I think that we weren’t there yet, before,” says Adèle.
It all changed when the duo travelled around Europe, in December 2019. They grew closer than ever. “That trip made us realize: ‘It’s not a big deal, I can let someone else play around with my lyrics’,” she recalls.From then on, they started experiencing the joy of creating music as a pair, and the idea of making a record together came to life. “At the beginning of lockdown, we told ourselves: ‘Let’s get to it and turn it into a professional project!’,” recounts the other half of the band. And that’s how their first EP, titled Yam, came to be. A collection of 5 songs they crafted together, ready to be released in the fall of 2021.
“It’s funny. It’s as if we used to be Adèle and Robin, and now we’re Adèle-and-Robin,” Adèle points out, before letting out a laugh. Robin agrees. “We can take off the dashes.”
AdèleandRobin put out their very first single, Demain (meaning “tomorrow”), on May 28th, paired with a poetic video. “We must’ve done like four attempts before making something that was sharable in our eyes and that was up to our standards,” he admits. His bandmate adds: “To us, it still has flaws.” For the song’s release, Pop! Goes the Music chatted with these two hard-working perfectionists who firmly believe in the power of luck.
First of all, is the title any sort of reference to the 2015 documentary Demain, by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent?
Adèle Couvert: Actually, not at all. But seeing the end-result, you could see a connection with the environmental issues. Demain is as much a personal song as it can take that dimension, too. But it wasn’t meant to be a nod (to the movie) at all.
Robin Douady: It has a sense of urgency, basically. Be it not waiting for anyone to do what you want to do on a personal level, or not waiting to act when it comes to the environment.
What prompted you to write this song?
AC: It’s like a lot of songs, it comes from a feeling, an idea, and we take it from there. I had this line in my head: “Parle-moi demain.” (“Talk to me tomorrow.”) And so, it started with that word. I don’t really have an explanation for it.
RD: Sometimes we don’t know why certain sentences come out. Because they sound pretty…
AC: We give them meaning.
RD: Yeah. We revamp them to give them meaning.
And the idea of urgency that you talked about – whether it’s on a personal level or in relation with what’s going on in the world –, is it something that you have had on your mind for a long time or is it a fairly recent realization for you?
AC: I think it’s something that comes with growing up. You realize that you no longer want to wait to do the things that you want to do. I feel like, when you’re young, you spend your time saying: “Ah, when I’m older, I’ll do this and that.” And now, we are getting older. There’s no more telling ourselves “when I’m older”. It’s now.
Has the pandemic changed your outlook on life? Has it played any part in making you more aware of the urgency of life?
RD: Yes. Finding ourselves not being able to do concerts – needless to say that culture was quarantined the most –, it gave us the desire-
AC: And the time.
RD: Well, it gave us the time to finish the EP we’re releasing this fall. Demain is the first single from it. The pandemic allowed us to focus on that, but it also made us even more invested in our music. Because right now, there’s like a traffic jam of upcoming releases; everyone wrote their album during lockdown and wants to release it. So promoting our record in the next months is going to be something we’ll have to work on very hard to stand out.
AC: The song itself was first written before any lockdown started, but we really worked on it during lockdown. That’s where it really became what is now.
Throughout the music video, we see a die that keeps showing up. What was the idea behind it?
AC: When we finished writing the songs for the EP – that we named Yam –, we realized that they all had a common theme: dealing with the challenges of growing up and discovering life a little. And one question kept coming up: “What is luck?” And we figured dice were what best represented that. Also, when we traveled in Europe, Robin went to the Young African Art Market, also known as the YAAM-
RD: It’s a neighborhood in Berlin.
AC: And so, the last song (on the EP) is called Yam.
RD: But with just one “a”.
AC: Like the dice game (a variation of yahtzee). And so we made the EP revolve around this symbolism.There’s also a die in the artwork. We really wanted to tie everything together.
RD: There’s a very good chance that you’ll find dice imagery here and there in what we’ll be putting out.
And do you think that there’s a lot of luck in life?
Both: (laugh)
AC: Well, yeah.
RD: Yes! Yes and no.
AC: In music, there’s a lot of luck. Like, whether people like your music or not… It’s a question that we pondered over a lot: “What makes music popular?” And it really is about luck. Making a living out of music is also a matter of chance.
RD: It’s luck, and we can do whatever to make sure that it isn’t, but in the end, it’s still up to chance. We have been fortunate enough to work with a label for almost a year on this EP, with a great team and partners. But for instance, you can spend a lot of money on promo and have a promo team that does the job, and then still end up with 4 views, a song that doesn’t appeal to people, and that’s just too bad.
AC: (laughs)
Do you really think luck has to do with whether music appeals to people or not? Or rather with it getting exposure or not?
RD: Both.
AC: Yeah, both.
RD: At the end, the goal is to make music that can speak in some way to all generations. And we worked a lot on that with director Rémi Guirao so that the message of the song (Demain) gets through even to people who don’t speak the language. We hope, and it’s what we’re striving to achieve, that our music can be understood by all.
AC: But otherwise yes, I think there’s a bit of luck in everything in life, even if we try to turn the odds in our favor as much as possible by working hard.
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