Transcript: The Meaning of Mitsou

Kim Thúy [00:00:02] Imagine a museum of the future … made up entirely of the stories we tell each other. Not the history that is captured in textbooks, but in the voices of the people who lived it. Which stories would resonate with you? Which ones do you think will last? And which will go on to shape how we live our lives, now and in the future?

[00:00:31] Welcome to Artifactuality … a podcast series featuring remarkable stories generously shared with the Canadian Museum of History. I’m your host, Kim Thúy.

[00:00:45] On this episode of Artifactuality: The Meaning of Mitsou.

Mitsou [00:00:51] In Quebec, we have an expression which says, “We were not born to do little things.”

[SFX: “BYE BYE MON COWBOY”]

Kim Thúy [00:00:59] French-Canadian singer, Mitsou Gélinas, was only 17 years old when her breakout single Bye bye mon cowboy took the airwaves by storm in 1988.

[SFX: “BYE BYE MON COWBOY”]

[00:01:30] It is rare for a French song to top the charts in English Canada. But it was a perfect pop confection in the age of Madonna.

Mitsou [00:01:40] I have to say that I’m pretty proud to say that I was one of the only French Quebecers who had a hit in the ROC, in the rest of Canada, as we would say it, with English Canadians. And one of the main things is that the song was so playful. It was very original. The sound was amazing. You know, there was a mix of pop with the guitar which made it very European, but at the same time, it was rock. And the lyrics. What’d you want me to tell you, you know? There’s “bye bye” and there’s “cowboy.” So every Canadian can understand those words, of course.

Kim Thúy [00:02:27] In the video for the hit song, Mitsou wore blonde braids, a bolero hat, and a mini skirt — a very little mini skirt. It was playful and provocative and the video was seared into our pop cultural memory. It’s also one of Mitsou’s many iconic costumes, now in the Canadian Museum of History’s collection. The costumes don’t just preserve a moment in pop music history. They tell the story of what it was like to be young and female and in the public eye back then. And how a girl from Montréal became a global superstar … by pulling together a look she found in her own closet.

Mitsou [00:03:14] I think I expressed a lot of independence and confidence because even though I was very young when I did that first song, I groomed it in my soul for all my life. And then right before doing the first pictures and the first video for Bye bye, we went into my closet and I got a jacket that I already had, that I loved — a black, short jacket. It was in fashion and style at the time. I had a bra, of course. Bustiers were in fashion as well, at the time. And I had a tiny, tiny skirt, which was almost like a belt, but every teenager, you know, would wear that. And the only thing that I bought for the look was the hat, at a hat store, Henri Henri on St. Catherine’s Street, right beside the Les Foufounes Électriques club. So it was the only expense I had for that look. If not, for the boots, I borrowed them from my mom, who kept a few clothes from the ‘60s. And she kept those boots, I don’t know why. But they were the coolest and there was nothing like that on the market at the time. ‘Cause they were not high heels. They were knee high but not high heels. Very ‘60s-like. And with, you know, the mix of all of these clothes, it was a perfect match.

Kim Thúy [00:04:50] It’s not every teenager that can just reach into her own closet to find a perfectly formed pop music personality. But it helped that Mitsou Gélinas was raised in a free-thinking, theatrical environment — where performing ran in the family.

Mitsou [00:05:08] My grandfather, Gratien Gélinas, was a famous playwright and an actor, then my father was an actor too. He passed away, unfortunately, in 2022. And my mom, at the time, had done cabaret dance as a young artist, and she became an artist manager at one point too. So I have to say that I was born in that type of environment. So I knew quite young that I wanted to be, you know, a performer, and I started writing my own songs when I was four and a half or five years old. So I felt like I was ripe and ready at 17, to do something. Of course, you’re never ready … I was not ready for everything that I had to live, but I’m pretty happy with what happened still.

Kim Thúy [00:06:06] Even as a teenager, Mitsou had a very strong sense of who she was and what she wanted to say. And she didn’t have to look too far for inspiration — not just with her sound, but also with her look.

Mitsou [00:06:25] In the ‘80s — 1980, that is — the only person, the only reference I had for design, was a very good friend of mine, a designer, whose name was Andy Thê-Anh. He was, like, maybe 17 and I was 15 or 16. And we worked together at Le Château, okay? So, our friendship started like that, but he was also a fashion student at Collège LaSalle. So, I asked him — before I released Bye bye — but I asked him to make a dress for me for my graduation. And then when I had a song and then an album to do, I thought of him to start creating looks for me. And so he did.

Kim Thúy [00:07:14] Before becoming the head designer for some of Canada’s biggest retailers, like Laura and Reitmans, Andy Thê-Anh was just another Montréal teenager like Mitsou with vision and talent to burn. Andy helped create the iconic costume on the cover of El Mundo, the album featuring Bye bye mon cowboy. Mitsou’s red mini-dress is hemmed with yellow ribbon and the sleeves are three-quarter-length purple satin. The bodice is covered with colourful fruit, and the look is finished off with a bird perched on the top of her head.

Mitsou [00:07:53] It was such a mishmash of every idea that we’ve had for the last few months. So I used to go on Mount Royal Street and buy some material. You know, the coolest and most colourful material. And Thierry Mugler was starting to be very successful, and so we were inspired by him. I wanted an extremely short dress, which I couldn’t even wear on stage or live because it was just so short. And I had bought at the Dollar Store tons of fruits and birds, fake birds, that we placed on the dress as well and in my hair. And I loved the mix of colour. Like, I think it’s Yves Saint Laurent that said red and pink work together. Well, to me, red, pink, purple and yellow worked really well together. And I think it still does.

Kim Thúy [00:09:02] The album El Mundo, featuring that unforgettable single, was a massive hit — not just in Canada, but around the world. And Mitsou’s life would never be the same.

Mitsou [00:09:17] Bye bye was such a hit. And it didn’t take long. I would say three weeks, my life had changed. Not completely, because I don’t think … You know, you stay the same. But at the same time, you know, my surroundings changed a lot. I had that vision, I knew that I wanted to be successful and make my mark. But I, I didn’t know it would be so quick. So the first time I heard the song, it was on C’est Quoi, the most famous radio station at the time. But then MusiquePlus, which was MuchMusic in French, took it on and then it wasn’t long before people knew my name. They didn’t know who I was. They didn’t know if I was French from France. Because the sound was pretty different from the other singers at the time.

[00:10:13] And the video was quite special, too, because we shot it in Super 8. You know, the film had a lot of grain on it. It looked like a ’60s, you know, genre of video. I was very inspired by the Smiths’ video How Soon is Now?, which had the same type of feel to it. And it was quite easy to do that video. We just borrowed a photographer’s studio. A friend of ours blew up some immense balloons where we projected some cowboy images and had the band over, and that was pretty much it. And it cost $1,800 to make that video.

[00:10:59] And then, a few months later, we were picked up by an international record company and they made us do, like, an English version of Bye bye. They had a remix done by Shep Pettibone, who remixed Madonna’s songs. And then they asked a famous movie and advertisement director — he was doing at the time, the Black Label Beer commercials, which were so edgy and cool — so they asked him to do the video in New York. So we did a magical video, which cost $100,000 instead of $1,800. And it never had the same type of success that the first video had, and the first version of the song had, so, which proves that sometimes people want, you know, the real thing.

Kim Thúy [00:12:00] So what accounted for Bye bye mon cowboy’s success beyond the fact that the song was just so catchy? Mitsou has a few theories herself.

Mitsou [00:12:13] There were not enough artists who represented my generation. There was the ‘70s, and the rockers, early ‘80s. Everything was so folk, traditional music, rock music, but I didn’t have, I couldn’t look up, apart from Jean Leloup, Paparazzi, maybe, a band from Québec City.

[00:12:37] But I couldn’t look up to Quebec artists who sounded like what I was listening to at the time, which came from Europe or from the States. And I felt like I had to create something. That was kind of a mission that I had, and I think I did. I think I was able, you know, at the right time to reach out, and to create something that would be successful, and that would sound like us.

[00:13:11] In Quebec, we have an expression which says we were not born to do little things, and I think that in Quebec, there is a force of creativity that we’ve proven over the years. But at the time Le Cirque du Soleil was just starting, and I had the chance of working close to them, because my sister was an acrobat in Le Cirque du Soleil in its earliest stages.

[00:13:45] And Céline Dion was not the Céline that we know now, and our film industry was not what it is now. And our greatest directors, Jean-Marc Vallée and Denis Villeneuve were not known. We didn’t have anyone, any person who represented us internationally, almost. Like, Robert Lepage was just starting as well. But there was something happening at the time where people started believing that we could do something.

Kim Thúy [00:14:24] After the roaring success of Bye bye mon cowboy came another hit single, Dis-moi, dis-moi, and a chance to push the envelope yet again with a new video.

[SFX: “DIS-MOI, DIS-MOI”]

Mitsou [00:14:36] We had decided to do a pretty, people would call it, like, a racy video. We used naked bodies as artworks. And to me, it’s my favorite video of my whole career. And it was well received in Quebec and not that well received in the rest of Canada.

Kim Thúy [00:15:37] The video for Dis-moi, dis-moi hit number one on MusiquePlus, in Quebec, but was banned by MuchMusic in English Canada for showing male and female nudity. At the time Mitsou defended her video calling it quote “a museum of the human body,” and that the naked men represented Greek statues. The controversy only helped her career, giving her the chance to break through in the United States and to work with a new upcoming artist who was just starting to make waves of his own….

Mitsou [00:16:21] When I was discovered — quote-unquote — by Hollywood Records with Dis-moi, dis-moi, we produced an EP with Jimmy Harry who was a record producer in New York whose first hit was RuPaul’s Supermodel, which was so big in the early ‘90s.

[00:16:44] So at one point we’re working together, Jimmy Harry and I, and he’s like, “Okay, so, uh, I’ve talked to RuPaul and he might have a song for you.” And I’m, like, “What?! This is impossible. I cannot believe it.” And so I received the song and I loved it the first time I heard it. And then I went back to New York to sing it. And, RuPaul was nice enough to come in studio with me and to be there while I was doing it.

[00:17:16] And I remember that day. I was thinking, “Okay, so RuPaul is coming. What am I going to wear?” Because of course I thought that a drag queen was always a drag queen in real life. But RuPaul is a fantastic artist, very sensitive, who came to the studio not wanting to take the limelight, and he came with jeans, a t-shirt, and a baseball cap, and no makeup. And RuPaul was just the coolest person in the universe. And me having also that kind of persona where, you know, I was known for my costumes and my extravagance. When I saw RuPaul come in and be so simple about the way he would present himself, I thought, “Oh, can I do that? Yeah, maybe I could.” And it kind of changed the way that I would go about all these costumes and the mix between my public life and my private life. I don’t have to be as dressed up in my private life. It took a lot of pressure off me.

Kim Thúy [00:18:41] But not for long. Mitsou’s time in Los Angeles was marked by big highs and big lows. She was signed by Hollywood Records, which spent a half million dollars producing her next album. She worked with songwriters who made hits for David Bowie and Whitney Houston. She took dance lessons from Paula Abdul’s teacher. But when it came time to release the album, the company’s marketing budget had drastically shrunk. It was more economical to actually shelve the album than it was to release it. Mitsou was devastated.

Mitsou [00:19:22] And it was so painful. I was heartbroken for years, yeah. My confidence went down the drain. And I continued singing, continued having a few hits, but at the same time, life had changed. Music had changed too, because we were in the early ’90s and the grunge music was at its highest and I was no Nirvana, you know? I was no … I think that the kids who liked me when they were very young needed a change, you know, and had evolved. And I wasn’t able to do something that would connect as well.

[00:20:12] So slowly but surely, my career started, you know, not going that well. And at one point I had to re-imagine my future because I was like, okay, you’ve done your last-chance Christmas album to make money. You’ve promoted things like car races — car races! Me, Mitsou, promoting, like, big truck races. I was doing things for money that were not in accord with the person I was. At one point I couldn’t pay my rent anymore after having been such a known figure in the industry.

Kim Thúy [00:20:59] While her singing career stalled, her music career did not. With her then boyfriend, and now husband, Iohann Martin, she started a music studio called Dazmo, producing songs for commercials, TV series, and soundtracks.

Mitsou [00:21:18] And I remember my grandmother, who was so proud. I loved her and she was so proud of me and being able to see me on TV. And, you know, she was used to seeing me every week on TV somewhere. Any appearance, there would always be something. And at one point she couldn’t see me anymore. And she was like, “So are you on welfare?” And I was like, “No, not really. You know, I’m starting this new company and we’ll see. But I think it’s going to work out.”

[00:21:56] But at the same time, how can you know as an entrepreneur if things are going to work out? And nobody knows, you know. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next. But I remember at the time, in the in-between time where I couldn’t pay my rent, I couldn’t pay my food, and I was, you know, at 25, 26 years old, going to eat at my mom’s because she had food and I didn’t. So the thing that saved me, I think, is that I’m a hard worker. I was used to working hard all the time, and I never, ever, ever, ever counted my hours. And I worked for seven days a week for years. And I still do.

Kim Thúy [00:22:50] All that hard work really paid off because in the end, things for Mitsou more than worked out. She and her husband started up two more music ventures, a soundtrack and licensing company, to add to her CV, along with actress, magazine editor, and long-time radio host.

Mitsou [00:23:13] Yeah, it’s funny, not [many] 24 or 25-year-olds have a second career. But it’s also weird to say that you were a has-been when you were 25, which I was, and thankfully I didn’t believe in it that much. I can say it took like eight years to get back on my feet and for people to say like, “Wow, you know, she’s done good for herself and she reinvented herself.” But there was a good time lapse where people didn’t know, not what I was up to, but if it was going to work out. I’m happy to be still here and to still be relevant in a way.

Kim Thúy [00:23:55] More recently, Mitsou received an opportunity that brought her story full circle and introduced her talents to yet another generation of fans.

Mitsou [00:24:06] So I have teenagers at home and, at one point, I decide to end my radio career after 21 years. And I get a phone call a few weeks before I announce to the public that I was leaving. And it’s Canada’s Drag Race, which calls me to ask if I would be nice enough to participate in one of the shows. And I’m, like, “Oh, my God, this is so cool,” because it’s such a cool mix where I can reunite with the extravagance. I can connect with someone who did well for himself. So I get home and I tell my kids that I got the proposal. And my kids started screaming ‘cause they didn’t realize that RuPaul had a connection with me … I would talk about it sometimes, but they would forget.

[00:25:04] You know, I remember one day, Stella is in the kitchen and she’s singing Everybody Say Love. And I’m, like, “Oh, yeah, you’re singing Mommy’s song, and I’m so proud.” And she’s, like, “No. I’m singing RuPaul.” And I’m, like, “But do you know he gave that song to me?” And she’s, like, “No, it’s not true and I don’t believe you.” And I say, “Yeah, yeah. I was the first one to sing that song first, or that line,” ‘cause RuPaul used it in many ways over the years. So it’s just fun to see that you can be everyone’s idol but never your kids’. That’s why they won’t get my clothes.

Kim Thúy [00:25:53] Even when others dismissed her as a superficial pop act, Mitsou knew what she was doing all along. Since the beginning of her career, she’s been challenging the old idea that a woman can’t be playful and taken seriously at the same time. Her sexy, clever costumes aren’t just fun to look at and reminisce over — they showcase a history of intimate collaboration between creative people. And they represent a career based on female resilience and constant reinvention.

CREDITS:

Kim Thúy: Thanks for listening to Artifactuality, a podcast of the Canadian Museum of History. I am Kim Thúy.

Artifactuality is produced by Makwa Creative and Antica Productions. Tanya Talaga and Jordan Huffman are the Executive Producers at Makwa. Lisa Gabriele is the Producer, Andrea Varsany is the Associate Producer, and Sophie Dummett is the Researcher for Antica. Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe are Executive Producers at Antica. Mixing and sound design by Alain Derbez.

Jenny Ellison and Robyn Jeffrey of the Canadian Museum of History are the Executive Producers of this podcast.

The interview with Mitsou was conducted by Jenny Ellison.

Daniel Neill, Researcher, Sport and Leisure, is the Museum’s Podcast Coordinator.

Check out historymuseum.ca for more stories, articles and exhibitions from the Museum.

For more information on popular music in the Museum’s collection that includes Mitsou’s iconic costumes, check out the links in our show notes.