Sébastien Tellier

Sébastien Tellier was born on 22 February 1975 in Le Plessis-Bouchard, in the Val-d’Oise, north of Paris. His father Alain, a guitarist, is often associated with the Magma circle, Christian Vander’s group, which fused prog, jazz and an invented language — Kobaïan — into one of the most radical experiments in French rock. Tellier grew up with that music at home, yet he went in another direction, drawn as a boy to film-score composers — François de Roubaix, Michel Legrand — rather than French chanson.

After “Fantino” appeared across the Source compilations — Source Rocks and Source Material — Tellier caught the attention of Air and signed to Record Makers, the label founded by Air with Marc Teissier du Cros and Stéphane Elfassi. His debut, L’Incroyable Vérité (2001), was recorded almost entirely by Tellier himself, who played most of the instruments. “Fantino” was included in the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation in 2003. His second album, Politics (2004), contains “La Ritournelle”, the piece that gave him a distinct signature: an orchestral crescendo built on strings and piano, which DJ Tom Middleton, hearing it for the first time in his car, described in these words: “I had to pull over and weep.”

In 2008, France chose him to represent the country at the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade with “Divine”. The song is sung largely in English, with a brief passage in French: an anomalous choice for France at Eurovision, and one that made controversy inevitable. Tellier took the stage wearing dark glasses, with a golf cart and five backing vocalists. He finished nineteenth. The controversy, more than the placing, expanded his audience across Europe. Sexuality, released the same year and produced by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, entered the French Top 40.

Then came My God Is Blue (2012), Confection (2013), L’Aventura (2014) — recorded partly between Paris and Rio de Janeiro with percussionist Robertinho Silva and arranger Arthur Verocai — and Domesticated (2020), inspired by domestic life after marriage and the birth of his children. In 2024, he performed “La Ritournelle” with Ensemble Matheus at the opening ceremony of the Paris Paralympic Games. In April 2025, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. On 30 January 2026, Kiss the Beast was released by Because Music: twelve tracks featuring Nile Rodgers, Kid Cudi and Slayyyter as guests, developed with Oscar Holter, SebastiAn, Victor Le Masne and Daniel Stricker. Tellier described it as a “maximalist” album, traversed by his dualities: “the wolf and the sheep, strength and fragility, dream and nightmare.” The 2026 European tour has already sold out at several venues, including both dates at the Olympia in Paris.