therapie taxi discography
adé, zaoui, renaud, ilan, vincent, si vous lisez ce blog, merci beaucoup de votre existence.
many things came to me in my 2020 covid era: books on religions, chinese, and french music. the seemingly harmless french aesthetic playlists that I stumbled across on youtube (this and this) had a certain appeal to me, and I kept listening to them (later inspired me to take french in college.) that was how I got introduced to therapie taxi and videoclub firsthand. my love for videoclub was more instantaneous and I quickly listen to all of their songs in euphories. I was there before, during, and after their breakup happens (I still follow both adèle and mattyeux.) for therapie taxi, not so much. I only knew their song naïve, and later on avec ta zouz, candide crush, and hit sale. it's only this april that spotify ventured me to their last ep rupture 2 merde. songs like été 90 and friendzone caught my attention; I started listening to more songs, and eventually their whole discography as of today.
the start of may, I went to their wikipedia for the first time and the line that hit me was "le groupe se sépare en octobre 2021," or that they separated october 2021, 7 months after videoclub. in fact, if 2021 was the year french duos/bands I know break up, 2023-2024 is the year most vietnamese indie bands break up, from cá hồi hoang (wild salmon) to ngọt (sweet). while I only know some bands after their separation, I think they still teach us a valuable lesson about the word we fear most to say: goodbye. farewells are always the hardest part of the journey, but also the part that makes it the most meaningful.
all the four bands above had their own ways of ending their journey, but I believe that therapie taxi had the best ending. the band members are still together, and the group was still at the peak of their career. so instead of following the rise-and-fall pattern, they just go out and fade into our memories as fireworks go off in the sky, or candles after they die off. however, what made it so good was the clear communications that the group gave their fans. they let them know in advance and dedicated a goodbye album and tour to them, and that the ex-members don't seem to hate one another.
I just spent a lot of time retroactively talking about how they said goodbye, so now let's go back in time to see how they said hello.
therapie taxi
it started in 2013, when adé posted an ad on easyzic (pre-spotify apps like myspace or soundcloud), where musicians can connect. it would have ended there, but raph (zaoui) responded. they met in paris, specifically pigalle (keep this place in mind because this is going to pop up a lot in their songs). raph was 17 at the time. adé? 18 (this is funny actually I thought they were the same age). pigalle is significant to the therapie taxi universe that they later form, as their songs have this very strong color and signature taste of red light districts, which I think may have been influenced by their first meeting place. at the time, zaoui was a guitarist-cellist who plays jimmy by moriarty. after this meeting, they agreed to form a group and rehearsed on sundays. inspired by groups like la femme and fauve, they sang songs in english first before choosing to sing in french (also quite familiar to how nabokov and murakami composed their best-known works in english). if there's a thing english can offer other than its popularity and wide-spread use, that would've been its simplicity: I think it's be easier to compose in a language where you don't have to think too much about what gender a word is and what alphabet to use.
the group's initially went by milky way, which is kinda lame. I'm happy that they switched to therapie taxi in june 2016. the name slaps because their music helped me with my mental health so much. there's something powerful about singing profanities out loud in the bathroom in a language that others don't understand after a very shitty day. as a continuation to the pigalle lore, their first single is salop(e), or slut. this song enjoyed significant success on the internet, and eventually led them to a contract signed by panenka music.
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| therapie taxi from left to right: renaud, vincent, zaoui, ilan, and adé |
how many people are in therapie taxi? 5 at the moment of the disband. apart from adé and zaoui, of which most people can recognize, there're also renaud (drummer), vincent (guitarist) and ilan (drummer). vincent and ilan departed in 2019 after touring in zenith, solidays and garorock. there was also félix (guitarist and keyboard). joseph signoret was also a member of milky way and therapie taxi, but his role is unclear. one person that wikipedia did not mention is alexandre zuliani, who was the composer and producer for the band.
dissecting discography
- therapie taxi (2017) E
- aline* (2018) S
- hit sale (2018) A
- mirage (l'amour sur la plage) (2019) S
- cadavre exquis (2019) A
- rupture 2 merde (2021) E
* yes this one is a cover of christophe's aline
during their career, therapie taxi released 2 singles, 2 eps, and 2 albums, which is nicely symmetrical. the two albums hit sale (xtra cheese) and cadavre exquis are sandwiched between their first ep therapie taxi and last ep rupture 2 merde. while they're all good, I believe that hit sale and rupture 2 merde shows the group's color the best. the colors of hit sale and cadavre exquis are antagonistic; it feels like you listen to one to feel hot and another to cool down. no matter what, they're pretty iconic because red and blue are the color of the french flag, the language in which they compose in.
remember pigalle? good. if there're 3 words that can sum up this group's music that will be I love South Lake Union Train Station, or I <3 SLUTS. if I ever open a bar or a club, I will be blasting hit sale xtra cheese all the time. the instrumental part simulates the sticky and hot feeling that you have going to bars, clubs, or concerts: essentially just social places. sex, and alcohol and drug addiction/abuse, love and adventure are strong themes across all of their eps and albums, especially concentrated in hit sale. cadavre exquis is a more human and social justice album, with songs tackling feminism (candide crush, noir), queer identity / drag queen (madame klaude), environmetal issues (l'équilibre). when it gets rupture 2 merde, however, songs get more bittersweet and tender, like priki in hit sale. their songs remind me of summertime and the goodbyes that I had to say summers back.
their videography is as excellent as their discography. people watching avec ta zouz thought they watched the weirdest shit ever. that is, wait until you watch bb la nuit.
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| rupture 2 merde on my flight home |
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| and été 90, the passenger next to me was french and he asked me "tu parles français" when we landed |
interpreting therapie taxi
the way to listen to therapie taxi is to imagine that there's a novel running deep beneath the lines of the songs. if it's a book, it'd probably follow the friendzoned fwb to lovers trope, where the two people were friends for a long time, but their relationship failed to ripen into something more. for lyrics references across albums go here.
also, lots of songs titles by therapie taxi are names: jean-paul, adena, aline, priki, candence (?), and madame klaude. jean-paul reminds me of (1) my english teacher in high school, who was french (we spoke a lil bit of french back in the days i still pronounced au revoir word by word), and (2) jean-paul sartre, the philosopher who's famous for his relationships with women. the charismatic personality described in the song serves well as a biography for sartre. aline is a song about a man begging his woman to come back by christophe, which therapie taxi covered. not quite sure if cadence is a name, but it reminds me of oh carolina by the 1975, which they explained the reason why they chose carolina instead of just any female name: cadence. for madame klaude, lots of wordplays on gender happen in the song, even in the song title. note that madame = mrs. and that claude is a boy's name. I'm sure you know a bunch of claude in your life: claude monet, claude debussy, claude lanzmann, etc. the contrast adds taste to the title.
oh to curate music in french
after yann tiersen, this is the second french artist/group that I tackled with. if yann tiersen challenged me with discogrpahy that's almost a day long (22 hours 34 minutes, 369 tracks, discounting tracks not available on spotify), therapie taxi tested my french proficiency because it's lowkey a french listening/reading comprehension test, not just instrumental music like yann tiersen's (although yann has songs with lyrics too). it was challenging for the most part, but with google docs, lyrics translate, and google translate, I pushed through. I have the clean and the annotated version right here with all their lyrics.
the most enjoyable part about reading their lyrics will always be the slangs and false french. you don't walk into college french classes and expect the professors to teach you how to swear, you have to go fend that for yourself. and swearing is such an integral part of french culture that it will help with my enculturation if used in the right context. false french is a term that refers to french words resembling english words but have a completely different meaning. it's probably the antihero of mots apparentes, or cognates. examples for cognates can be chocolate and chocolat, they all refer to chocolate, the sweet treat. false french, on the other hand, had you thinking that you know where in fact you don't know, which can be funny, and even dangerous, sometimes.
I shall illustrate how fucked up you can get with false french by showing you my attempt to translate one of their song called ombre chinoises. ombre sounds like sombre, which refers to shadows or dark things. because english is my second language, I don't always get it right even in english. sombre and ombre both refer to shadows, but I thought it means dark. so we got our first word down. dark. chinoises? easy. chinese. so if you put the two words together it's dark chineses right? to make matter even worse I tried fixing some words and arrived at "black chinese" or "chinese shadows." I got very confused. after a google search I learned that ombre chinoises refers to puppet theater, not black chinese. it's the same state of amazement that I had when I discovered chopsticks = baguettes in french; baguette means oblong stuff.
before you laugh at me see how much you get out of 15
- bless and bless
- bled and bled
- sale and sale
- travel and travail
- bras and bras
- attend and attendre
- college and collège
- grave and grave
- joy and joli
- poison and poisson
- queue and queue
- chariot and chariot
- panic and panier
- gross and gross
- pain and pain
ok here's the meaning of the second word
- hurt, so bless-moi doesn't mean bless me, but hurt me
- town, so marlboro bled doesn't mean smoke until you bleed, but it means marlboro town (probably refers to marlboro town in new jersey, not marlborough in london where the cigs got its name)
- dirty, so hit sale meas dirty hit (wow coincidental with the 1975), not hit discount
- work, almost the antonym of travel, unless you're on a business trip
- arm, singular
- wait
- middle school, yeah I know it's confusing
- serious
- beautiful
- fish, explains a lot how the french can eat poisson and not die
- dick (as a slang), it still primarily means queue in french
- still means chariot but can also mean shopping cart
- basket/shopping cart. i mean the shopping and panic part go together, probably why ikea did this (it's fake btw)
- big, yeah ik sometimes size can be a concern
- bread, life is pain, but au chocolat
learning to say goodbye
in an interview with jack canal plus and an article by voici.fr, adé explained her take on the separation as: "ça fait plutôt un happy ending qu'une décadence ratée," or that "it's more of a happy ending than a failed decadence." I swallow this every time I think about being able to see them live one day, but never on the same stage again. this is the spirit that rupture 2 merde has, it's sad and bittersweet, but it's essential. you have to allow things to end so that new things can begin in your life. this applies to the movement of people, failures, and even successes.
I could've included both adé's and zaoui's solo albums in this post, but it'd be too much on top of their 4 albums and eps. I'll probably save it for another day. for videoclub, however, I look forward to writing a post with their only album and each artist's (adèle and mattyeux) solo albums. waiting for mattyeux has been pretty much a pain though.
one thing that I'm still happy about is how both therapie taxi and videoclub artists all go on to their solo careers after their breakup. regardless of the breakup, I remain a devoted follower, and I believe it's the best way to support artists' music careers after they disband, where drop in followers and listeners is oftentimes a direct result.
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