Hélène Sio Beyond Love

There's something rare about watching an artist release a single and take the stage the same night. On Thursday, April 2nd, Hélène Sio did exactly that at the Centre des Arts d'Enghien-les-Bains, as part of the La Tête la Première festival. Bye Bye had dropped on streaming platforms just a few hours earlier. Performed in a different version, guitar and voice, Antoine Lartigue by her side. That deep voice and her harmonics fit perfectly with her world, a soft pop tinged with French chanson. Between two passages, a smile. She loves performing, and it shows.

What she has to say is changing. After a first EP, Les Ratures, built largely around a love story and its brutal end, Bye Bye marks what she herself calls a new era. Breaking free from a relationship, and from the way others look at her. She wants to talk about her life as a young woman, about who she is beyond all that. The cover says it all, a cry of liberation, eyes closed, hair in motion. Backstage after the show, she confides:

"It's the first single in a series of four that will lead up to my first album, coming out in January 2027."

Hélène Sio grew up in Narbonne, with a piano at the center of the living room. At nine, she tried classical singing at the conservatory, love at first sight. Ten years in a structured environment, with Pink Floyd, Supertramp and Barbara as a backdrop, even though nothing had pointed her toward pop.

At fifteen, a stroke interrupted that path. She had to relearn how to speak, walk, sing, to rediscover gestures and reflexes that had once felt natural. In her hair, a dark streak marks the exact location of the affected artery. At sixteen, her parents enrolled her in The Voice. She joined Zazie's team with a cover of La nuit je mens and reached the semi-finals. Before that, she sang in English, in a band. That's where she found her voice in French.

What strikes you when she talks about her work is her love for words. She writes from a single word, an expression, places it at the center of a blank page and builds the song around it. Influenced by Marguerite Duras in her writing, by James Blake and Billie Eilish in her music.

"I love writing, taking the time, finding the right word."

For the past two years, she has been making music full time, surrounded by the same people. The piano is still a tool she's getting comfortable with, a place she returns to sometimes out of discipline, sometimes out of desire, without trying to hide that part of the effort. An artist moving at her own pace, each release saying a little more about who she is.

Bye Bye is available on all streaming platforms.

Article written by Eliott Vinot.