Zaho de Sagazan, the chic saviour of French chanson

The French singer-songwriter Zaho de Sagazan is hosting a party, but no one has showed up. Dressed to the nines in a gown that sparkles with mirrored sequins, she’s making the best of it — she can have fun on her own. 

At least, that’s the brief for the HTSI shoot in a lofty studio in eastern Paris. Relentless rain beats down on the skylights above, as de Sagazan turns up her Spotify playlist. The mix is hypnotic and frenetic in equal parts, spanning the Belarusian post-punk group Molchat Doma, the French band Frustration, and the synthpop Soviet sounds of Belarusian-Armenian artist Permsky Kray (thank you, Shazam).

As she moves for the camera with the same theatrical gestures she often incorporates into her idiosyncratic choreography, it’s clear de Sagazan is accustomed to performing. “I can adapt; offer an interpretation of myself. I will say to myself, ‘Put shy Zaho aside, feel confident,’” she says later, slipping into the third person, which she does a few times in our conversation. In the real world, however, de Sagazan is “incapable” of being alone. “I can be a sunny person with a lot of joie de vivre, but the minute I am alone, I become melancholic. I need to be with friends and family all the time,” she admits once the shoot has wrapped and we are settled on a sofa. On the cusp of 25, de Sagazan has wiped off her make-up and changed into jeans, a zip-up hoodie and boots. She has a youthful prettiness and a shy, impish grin – a transformation from the intense gaze of her on-camera persona. Sipping on a carton of juice, she is warm, genuinely funny, and talks at a pace with the same velvety, deep timbre she uses when she sings. 

With her sell-out tours and multi-award-winning, platinum-selling debut album, La Symphonie des Éclairs (2023), de Sagazan is being hailed as the new hope of chanson française. She cites the canonic singer-songwriters Barbara and Jacques Brel as influences – along with electronica acts Kraftwerk and Soulwax – on her unique brand of synth-heavy electro and poetic lyricism. Comparisons with Édith Piaf were only strengthened by her full-hearted rendition of “Sous le ciel de Paris” at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony.

“In France, there are two types of songwriters: those who write realistic stories and are too literal, and those who are more poetic, who play with the sound of the words, without the meaning. Zaho’s songs are perfectly in the middle – elegant and poetic, and modern,” says Matthieu Tessier, the managing director of Warner Chappell Music France, who also works with top-selling francophone female artists Angèle and Aya Nakamura. Tessier invited de Sagazan to his office in July 2021 after having listened to six of her early demo tracks. “He changed my life,” the singer says of Tessier, who subsequently co-published her album and set her up with a tour manager and publicist. 

De Sagazan – full name, Zaho Mélusine Le Moniès de Sagazan – grew up in the harbour city of Saint-Nazaire on France’s west coast, in a sprawling, happy home with her artist father, Olivier de Sagazan, teacher mother, Gaëlle Le Rouge de Rusunan, three older sisters and her twin, Kaïta. “It was a very fun house, not organised or tidy – but you felt a strong sense of life. We danced, we talked loudly, we sang,” she says. 

Despite all this, her adolescence was marked by an almost debilitating sadness – an experience she talks about openly in interviews and onstage, and plumbs in her songwriting, exploring themes of identity and alienation. “I didn’t trust anything in life, I thought I was too ugly,” she says, of that time. “I told myself that no one could fall in love with me. I thought I was smart, but I couldn’t find myself…” 

Singing proved therapeutic and her anger dissipated when she sat down at the piano. “I had total faith in my music. I knew I would fill concert halls and even sing with Tom Odell one day.” While she could not have predicted that her performance of David Bowie’s “Modern Love” at the Cannes Film Festival would go viral (she danced through the auditorium in white socks), she was right about Odell, whom she has long recognised as a kindred spirit. They struck up a friendship on Instagram after she tagged him in a post during his concert in Paris in 2022. He DMed her asking for the image, and she sent him a link to her music. Last month they released a duet, ‘Old Friend’, a track de Sagazan wrote years before she met the British singer. 

“I was blown away by the music straight away,” says Odell over email. “It was unlike anything I’d ever heard. I knew it was going to resonate with people, but I never could have predicted just how much. We made ‘Old Friend’ together in Nantes [where de Sagazan lives] this summer. It’s mostly her song, I just added my little verse toward the end. It’s a curious title, as honestly, we’ve not even known each other for a year but, for reasons beyond me, it really does feel like a lifetime.” 

Performing is how de Sagazan came into her own. “I can be a shy person. I cannot go up to someone in the street and ask for a lighter. On the other hand, I have no problem singing in front of 15,000 people,” she laughs. Over the past 22 months alone, she has clocked up over 200 gigs (more than two a week). It was through touring – rather than YouTube, Spotify or TikTok, like so many singers of her generation – that she first built her following and her confidence, thrilling audiences with shows that veer from elated electro dancing to piano-playing melancholy. “She is even better live than she is on record,” says Odell. “She is fearless, and it’s inspiring to witness.” 

Such raw emotional vulnerability is intentional. “When I sing, it is up to me to go back to the emotion I was in when I wrote my songs,” de Sagazan says, “so on stage, it’s more about the act of also giving these emotions.”

Once the lights go up post-show, she can often feel depleted. “I tend to give 100 per cent every time, even if there are only 15 people in the audience. I could perhaps give a little less,” she says, laughing again. “I like making other people happy, and then that makes me happy, but afterwards, I have nothing left for me.” At this stage in her career, holidays are a rarity, though she’s looking forward to a necessary week off in Montreal with friends soon. 

An unexpected appreciation for fashion, kindled by a working collaboration with Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, has bolstered both her performances and her self-belief. “Zaho is a huge revelation for me, and I am so happy I have got to know her personally,” says Ghesquière, who discovered de Sagazan in early 2023 during a live TV performance of one of her first singles, “Tristesse”. “The sound was off, and when I saw her on the screen, I immediately turned the volume up. I was instantly captivated by her voice, her music and her charisma.” Later that year, he included three of her tracks in the SS24 show soundtrack. 

“I started to feel beautiful when I started performing and dancing, and I stopped looking at myself and caring about my body,” says de Sagazan, who favours Ghesquière’s custom unitards with bike shorts to perform her more high-intensity dance tracks. “I used to hate fashion because I associated it with external beauty, but then I realised the power of clothing. It performs a different function – that makes you feel good,” she says. 

By now, her team has left the studio, but the rain hasn’t stopped. It’s time to order a taxi and return to her sister’s place – her Paris base when she’s away from Nantes. As a final thought, I wonder what she would say to 13-year-old Zaho, who could be so abject and unsure? 

She smiles. “I have an enormous amount of tenderness for this little person, who I find adorable, but at the same time, la pauvre cocotte (poor little thing).” She shakes her head, pauses, and continues. “But I’m not sure I would tell her too much. I’m happy with where I got to this point. I would be too afraid to shake things up and change my course.” She waves at me as she steps into the taxi, all on her own.

Hair, Ludovic Bordas at Airport Agency. Make-up, Tiina Roivainen at Airport Agency. Photographer’s assistant, Marco Marchetti. Stylist’s assistant, Sabīne Groza. Production, Mickaël Bardi