We had the opportunity to have a little chat with London-based French artist Margot, who has recently released her latest single “Toi Et Moi” — a stunning bilingual collaboration with singer-songwriter Nikaa.
Although 21 year-old singer-songwriter Margot hails from Paris, she splits her time between London, Berlin and the French capital— where she also creates, writes and records music. Her music is an infusion of pop and contemporary R&B with a combination of French and English lyricism— a style French-Algerian singer-songwriter Lolo Zouaï has perfected in the past few years.
Margot’s latest single “Toi Et Moi” is a stunning bilingual collaboration with singer-songwriter Nikaa, written over a lush production handled by producer Frank Slimm. The jazz trained Nikaa delivers a smooth and soulful vocal performance on the verses as she sings about a girl searching for love and waiting for the right one to come long, while Margot’s alluring pop-infused French chorus and bridge give the song a universal appeal.
After listening to her music and watching her visually-striking music videos on YouTube, it was only right to have a chat and get to know the emerging star and fellow French-speaking Londoner. Read our conversation below:
How are you doing Margot?
I’m good, thank you!
What have you been doing during lockdown?
I’ve been trying to stay as busy as possible. I released my latest solo single, ‘Rendez-Vous’ in April, which I also did a stripped version of. We made a video for it in a zoom video call style with some friends of mine which was a lot of fun! Other than that, I’ve just been making lots of music, working on a bigger release for later this year, and buying too many plants online!
That sounds cool, at least you’re staying active! Has lockdown affected your creativity at all?
It’s been a weird one because on one side it’s been great and I’ve been more focused. On the other hand, I like to base my songwriting on stuff that’s happened to me or my friends and I now feel like I’m missing that aspect with such a reduced level of contact.
I understand. Where are you based at the moment?
I’m in London now, just moved here from Berlin about a year ago.
How are you finding London?
I really like it! I love the English music scene, and the people here. And even if I get homesick, I’m never too far away from Paris as well.
Amazing — exactly! When did you decide to combine French and English in your music?
When I wrote my last single ‘Rendez-Vous’, I wanted to create a song based around words that are the same in French and in English because I realised how much of a shared vocabulary we have! Since then it has definitely become a more natural part of my songwriting, which fuelled some of the ideas for ‘Toi et Moi’ and will be on some more for the future too.
Nice! How long have you been speaking English for?
I was actually born in the US and was an English speaker back then but my family returned to France when I was 3 and I totally lost touch with speaking English. Despite that, I was still surrounded with the American culture, music, TV shows, etc. That my parents had brought back with us. So I guess it made it easier later on to learn it with school and traveling.
Oh right, I see. Can you speak any other languages?
No only French and English fluently. I lived in Berlin for a while but German is such a hard language to learn!
Ha, yes German is so hard to learn! Let’s talk about your new single “Toi Et Moi” with Nikaa, how did that collaboration come in place?
I met Nikaa very randomly at a music convention late last year. We met later on when we were hanging out at my place with Frank Slimm, who produced the track, in our home studio and we decided to jam around and write a song. Toi Et Moi came out of that session! It was really organic and i think that is reflected in the vibe of the song also.
Sounds really good to me. What message are you trying to convey on the song?
It’s really just a 21st Century love song, with a common sense of frustration that the right person might never come along in the verses and a bit of hope and happiness in the chorus.
The song is such a vibe, did any other artist out there inspire it at all?
At the start of the writing session, we were just playing around with different guitar sounds with no direct reference or intention. Around the same time I was listening to Chasing Summer from SiR, which has a similar vibe to our track, and Ben L’Oncle Soul.
Ooh I can see the vision now. Do you have any expectations for this release?
Since I’ve been in London, writing with London based artists, like Nikaa and Frank Slimm, it’s been really cool to be able to expose some French language music to a new audience, and I hope that Toi et Moi is just the beginning of that.
It definitely will, there’s a lot of French people here in London now! If you were to permanently reside in one these cities — Paris, Berlin or London, which city would you choose and why?
I’m in London for the moment so I think I’d like to stay here for a little but I would miss my family and long time friends so much if I never got to go back to Paris. Same goes with Berlin, with all the memories of living alone for the first time at 17, partying and making music with new people.
What can we expect next from Margot?
Lots of music will be coming out! I’m working on something a bit bigger for later this summer, on top of some other collaborations, music videos, etc. I have a band now too! We started rehearsing before lockdown so we’ll be getting out there and performing as soon as it’s safe to do so!
Connect with Margot
Connect with Nikaa
Stream “Homegrown” on Spotify