South London French singer releases first album in English to connect with people

A French singer-songwriter has released his first studio album in English after feeling the need to counter the language-barrier-induced loneliness and connect with his English- speaking neighbours.

Mathieu Boogaerts, who has been living between Clapham and Brixton for five years, has recorded seven albums over the last 20 years – but all in French.

After moving to London he felt disconnected when he realised people couldn’t understand what he was singing about, and set to rectify it.

The product of this alienation is a charming, heartening, funny and sometimes sad collection of songs titled Boogaerts (en anglais).

Mr Boogaerts said: “The song has to come from the inside. I didn’t want to use a dictionary because then I would be using words I’m unfamiliar with. If I was a painter, I would say French has so many colours and so many possibilities with so many vowel sounds. This record is written with a naive English because my English is not good, but it was also a challenge.

“The words seem shorter, there isn’t the same palette of sounds, and there are a lot of English words that don’t sound good in my mouth, like the word ‘really’, which I can’t say properly… so that meant I had about one hundred fewer words to work with.”

Boogaerts (en anglais) is out on February 26.