It’s hard not to draw a line from The Teenagers’ penis pop right back to the very moment when Serge Gainsbourg leaned over to Whitney Houston on live TV and said, “I wanna fuck you”. When Gainsbourg wrote Les Sucettes about the girl who liked to suck on lollipops for adorable songstress France Gall in the mid-sixties, the parents of Dorian Dumont, Quentin Delafon and Michael Szpiner were barely in their teens themselves. But Gainsbourg’s saucy legacy lives on in The Teenagers mish-mash of Nada Surf’s Popular-style spoken word, early-nineties shoegaze, references to cheerleaders and Alicia Silverstone’s Clueless.
Only two years ago the three French kid clubbers were a bit bored and set up a MySpace account. They wrote a song called Fuck Nicole with no other intention than to have something to do and a bit of fun. Six months later they write two more songs, Homecoming – a European guy telling us about his sex with an American cheerleader, and Starlett Johansson – about this French guy who is obsessed with an actress (guess who?). After adding the songs to their Myspace, The Teenagers get signed to Merok Recordings (The Klaxons and Crystal Castles) before they have ever played a single live gig and as a complete surprise to Dorian, Quentin and Michael they’re hyped in several corners around the globe.
Their influences are listed on MySpace: “Sex, Love, Party, Vodka, Red Bull, Summer, Puberty, Ham Rolls, Swedish Girls,” and those influences are evident in their lyrics. Sunset Beach – in a French accent: “I fucked her to Mariah Carey’s Hero, now I’d like to sleep alone so I said, ‘do you want to have a shower before you leave'”. Homecoming: “On day two I fucked her, it was wild, she’s such a slut”. Every song evolves around pretty much the same theme. But still, by equal measures of Nada Surf’s Popular, The Strokes’ guitars, The Killers’ stadium-suited choruses and a wide-eyed French perception of American high school and college culture they have created a brilliant and charming result.
I meet two of them on the morning after a laptop driven DJ-set in a fancy bar somewhere in Europe.
Your breakthrough had much to do with the hype that started on line; bloggers picked up on Starlett Johansson and Homecoming. It all feels very modern.
Quentin: Yeah, it’s kind of crazy. It seems like we’re one of the first bands that come through this way. Two demo versions, a MySpace page and all of a sudden we’re in blogs around the world.
Dorian: Fuck Nicole is actually about when we registered on MySpace. Nicole was the first person who sent us a friend request. We didn’t get it. Who was this Nicole? So we wrote a song about her. Our first ever.
So this little project has become slightly larger than you planned?
Both in unison: Larger than life.
D: It was only intended as a little hobby. I remember the first time a label contacted us. A Canadian label who wanted to release a single. We just went ‘Wow’.
Q: And now we’re touring. We seem to make progress every day. Remixes, interviews. We have no idea where this will take us.
I suppose you have the mp3 culture to thank for the rapid rise. Do you feel different about downloading now when you’re releasing your first album?
Q: I don’t really know. Our generation download music, that’s just the way it is. And if people can’t afford to buy it, I suppose it’s OK. It’s more important that they listen to us, go to our gigs and buy the t-shirts.
Thom Yorke said ‘I’ve got nothing against people downloading our songs, what I don’t like is that they do it even though I told them not to’.
Q: The last ten to fifteen records I’ve listened to I downloaded so it’s a bit hard for me to criticise anyone, ha-ha. I don’t even have a CD player anymore.
You’re very active on line, a blog on your homepage, a Prom Queen/King contest and so on, but the most interesting thing is your photo blog Dorian. Tell me about it.
D: I think pictures tell so much more than I ever could with words, and since I take pictures all the time I felt I might as well post them on a blog. It’s got quite a few visitors.
It feels genuine, unedited, in contrary to many other artist’s blogs. A lot of parties, a lot of girls?
Q: Dorian only shoots good-looking girls.
D: That’s not true.
Q: It is too.
D: It’s only that I have good-looking friends.
Q: No, it’s not. You only want to get more hits on the blog.
So you take pictures of good looking girls to improve the hit count?
Q: We can see how many clicks there is on every image, and seriously, the images people look at are the ones where beautiful girls are showing some skin. The pictures with us have terrible statistics, ha-ha.
D: Yeah, it’s true. No one wants to look at us.
Q: I suppose we have to have all those party shots or otherwise people wouldn’t even bother going on to our blog. So we have to.
The lyrics on your album Reality Check evolve heavily around a romantic, or maybe nostalgic, idea of American teenage life. Was that an outlined plan from day one, to make somewhat of a concept album?
Q: We didn’t think of that in the beginning, when we wrote the songs. But you’re right. It is like a concept album.
The Teenagers and Pink Floyd, like.
Both: Ooohhh?
Eh? Maybe not that much of a concept.
D: You already said it. You can’t take it back now.
Alright, you seem very fascinated by American culture and you’ve already toured there a lot. Do you think that’s where you get your musical influences from?
Q: I think the US likes us, which is cool, we’ve got really good response over there. So what inspires us? I guess it’s M83, Stuart Price, Britney Spears, The Strokes, life? love?
D: And girls!
Q: Of course, the girls.
You have re-located to London, do you hang out with any other bands?
Q: No, not really. The only ones we hang out with are Crystal Castles. We toured with them in England and got on really well. Then they did a remix of Homecoming that was great! But they weren’t happy themselves so it’s not released. Maybe we do a Teenagers versus Crystal Castles later.
What was it that made you leave Paris and move to London?
Q: I got tired of Paris already when I graduated from high school so I moved to London with one of my friends. So we only rehearsed with Teenagers when I was back in Paris. But when we got signed by a London label it got a lot more practical if Dorian and Michael moved there too, so they did.
What’s the biggest difference between the cities?
Q: London feels a lot more “now”. A city with good parties and bad food. Paris is the opposite. I mean Justice and Ed Banger do really well – but it doesn’t show when you come to Paris, they hang out in other countries. The club scene in Paris sucks.
