Yelle out loud

Chances are you’re not fluent in French. But when you hear French pop singer Yelle, chances are you won’t care.

That’s because the rising international phenomenon (real name: Julie Budet) fills her 2007 debut album “Pop-Up” with so many irresistible radio and club hits-in-waiting that DJs—and people just looking for a reason to shake it—would be foolish not to take notice. Behind the bouncy material and colorful outfits is some risqué material, as Budet riffs on subjects such as masturbation and lesbian temptation—not that non-French speakers would notice.

Budet speaks English too, but she unfortunately struggled to understand several of our questions. (Multiple attempts to discover if the French want Paris Hilton to change her name were misinterpreted as questions about Perez Hilton, who debuted Yelle’s video “Ce Jeu” on his blog.) Here’s a roundup of info Budet, 25, offered on the phone from São Paulo, Brazil.

On why people enjoy songs about lesbian temptation, like Yelle’s “Les Femmes (The Women)” and Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”:
I think maybe today it’s easier to talk about your sexual orientation. It’s not a problem today to say, “I am a heterosexual, but I can have an experience with a girl.” Katy Perry, with “I Kissed a Girl,” she’s young, she’s 22 or 23, and she comes from the same generation of me, you know. It’s a more free generation. We just want to be free in our life and in our sexuality. We can test and you can have lesbian experiences. It’s not a problem. And we can stay with a boy.

If her wild style in photos and videos represents what she wears normally:
We try to be different and to give different view of our style because I have different [faces]. Sometimes I can be shy. Sometimes I can be more expressive. It’s important for me to have these different parts in the video too, and in the style too. I can be in totally black and maybe after I can wear something more colorful. It’s not a problem because for me it’s [reflective] of my personality. Normally I have always something colorful on me. Sometimes it’s a bag, or my shoes.

On something that Yelle would do that Julie Budet wouldn’t:
It’s not a character. It’s a real part of me. It’s just an extension. In real life maybe I’m a little bit shy, and maybe [Yelle is] my really expressive part. And it’s really important for me to keep the two parts on stage. And of course when I’m in stage, I’m more expressive than in the real life.

On her live show:
It’s really rock and electro show. It was really important to give another view of our album because it’s really pop, but then on stage it’s more rock ‘n’ roll and more powerful.

Her sales pitch for the album:
I think it’s an album for my generation. It’s an album talk about my real life, talk about the real life of a 25-year-old girl, about love and sex and parties. It’s really full of joy. With this album I just want to make people have fun and to give pleasure to the people.

On non-French fans not understanding her lyrics:
At the beginning when we start to write in French it was the question. “Maybe it would be a problem for us.” And in fact it’s really crazy, because we have message from people who say to us, “OK, we don’t understand but we find translation on the web and we try to know what to sing.” It’s really cool for me to know that. English people and Spanish people can understand some typical French expressions, “Comme ci comme ça,” “C’est la vie,” “Je ne vous,” and we use these little expressions in our songs. So it’s not so complicated, I think. [Laughs] You can understand some words. It’s really really about the music.