Christine and the Queens Find Their Better ‘Angels’ With Help From Producer Mike Dean

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi Every album in the synth-pop arsenal of Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier – aka French vocalist-composer Christine and the Queens – benefits from a delicious brand of drama to go with his often obtuse lyricism.

Yet it is only with this weekend’s release of “Paranoïa, Angels, True Love” that Chris (as he prefers to be known) has gone the extra mile in his decade-long journey of music making and found genuine theater his melancholy work, courtesy of the inspiration of playwright Tony Kushner’s iconic HIV-AIDS elegy “Angels in America.” Calling the grand new work a “heart-opening transformation, a prayer towards the self,” and “a rest in true love,” Chris opened up his mind to the smartly, tortured soul of Kushner… and his Queens’ usually cloistered self-productions to collaborators such as Madonna, 070 Shake and Mike Dean, the co-producer of “Paranoia, Angels, True Love.” Sharing a Los Angeles studio for an afternoon of multi-media work when Variety called, Chris stated that the recent collaboration between him and Dean started as a “blessing, a message from Mike to work together.

I was shocked, and couldn’t allow myself to believe that could happen. I had already loved all of his choices: how he mixes music, his textures, how he produces.

That Mike wanted to take a musical journey with me was thrilling…. We connected like two sprinters running toward the same goal.” Dean – known for a production slate including the Weeknd, Beyoncé and Kanye West – says he fell in love with Christine and the Queens’ music courtesy of his girlfriend Louise: “She was a big fan, always playing it during dinner,” he says in a separate interview.