“Hand grenade” (“La grenade” in French) is the first track of Luciani’s new album “Sainte Victoire” (2018). Luciani’s deep and sensual voice singing simple and yet very powerful lyrics about how female agency cannot and should not be ignored. La Grenade is French electric/feminist pop music at its best. Explosive Politics goes pop.

Artist: Clara Luciani

Songwriters: Clara Luciani / Ambroise Willaume

Album: Sainte Victoire (2018)

La grenade lyrics © Sony ATV Music Publishing

Clara Luciani is not an unknown French singer. She is part of this flourishing new generation of modern French electro-pop singers one should discover. With her deep voice, she has already seduced more than one. Luciani is a former member of the eccentric psych-punk band “La Femme” (Woman). She was also featuring on “Cyborg”, the latest album of the French rapper Nekfeu. She is now quite an energetic singer-songwriter. There is something of PJ Harvey, Patti Smith and Nico in Luciani’s album “Sainte Victoire” (2018) in homage to the eponym mountain close to Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, one of the greatest landmarks of Provence. It is melancholic, dark and profoundly personal (On ne meurt pas d’amour – “no one dies from love”) but also groovy and elegantly pugnacious.

Hand Grenade

“Hand grenade” (“la grenade” in French) is the first track of her new album. Strong bass, 1970s synth with a bit of disco flavour, Luciani’s deep and sensual voice speaks to those who still believe in a retrograde image and understanding of women. The song starts with a proud and straightforward question:

“Hey you, what are you looking at? You’ve never seen a woman fighting? Follow me in the pale city and I will show you as I bite, as I bark”.

Nothing as a fragile understanding of feminity in Luciani’s lyrics but an explosive one. Like a hand grenade. In an interview for the French newspaper Le Parisien in January 2018, she said,

I wanted to express that behind the reassuring fantasy of the woman as a Madonna, behind the sweetness of a breast as the supreme symbol of feminity and fertility, could hide a rage for living, a force and a violence equal or superior to those of men. (…) Women are not poor little vulnerable and dumb dolls”.

Women are rarely associated with devotion to the cause and the longstanding belief that women assume passive and inherently less interesting roles in militant organisations is still very much alive across academic and political spheres. With a certain consistency, women involved in armed subversion, crime and war are very often captured in mass media in storied fantasies, treated with curiosity, fascination or abnormality.

With Hand Grenade, Luciani goes against. Female political agency is not denied but reinforced. One could even say that Hand Grenade is a very welcoming and enjoyable musical version of Gentry and Sjoberg’s Beyond Mothers Monsters Whores[1], an invitation to defeat stereotypical thinking about women’s capabilities.

One expects too much from a woman, completely contradictory things, the classic of being the mother and the whore, being a creature, a mother, a lover and a madonna. it’s impossible. I wanted to make a song” Luciani said in an interview released in a men’s magasine.

One could not dream of a better song in order to retrieve female political agency from gendered stereotypes.

Lyrics

Hey you! What are you looking at? You’ve never seen a woman fighting? Follow me in the pale city and I will show you as I bite, as I bark.

Be careful, under my breast, the grenade. Under my breast there look. Under my breast the grenade. Be careful, under my breast, the grenade. Under my breast there look. Under my breast the grenade.

Hey you! But what do you think? I am only an animal disguised as a Madonna. Hey you, I could hurt you. I could hurt you, yes in the night that shivers.

Be careful, under my breast, the grenade. Under my breast there look. Under my breast the grenade. Be careful, under my breast, the grenade. Under my breast there look. Under my breast the grenade.

Hey you, what do you imagine? I am also voracious. I am as alive as you. Do you know that there, under my chest, anger sleeps? One that you do not suspect.

Be careful, under my breast, the grenade. Under my breast there look. Under my breast the grenade. Be careful, under my breast, the grenade. Under my breast there look. Under my breast the grenade.

Credits: Marina Ginestà on the rooftop of Barcelona’s Colón Hotel, during the Spanish Civil War © Photo by Juan Guzmán, 1936. Haganah girl in hand grenade training © David Rubinger, 1948.

[1]. Gentry, Caron E. and Laura, Sjoberg. 2015. Beyond Mothers Monsters Whores. Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books