How Coeur de Pirate learned to open up when her world was shutting down

When Béatrice Martin, better known as Coeur de Pirate, sat down to write her fourth album, she wanted her songwriting to go deeper and darker than it ever has before.

Martin is fully bilingual — her 2015 album, Roses, was half in French and half in English — but she knew that in order to explore the nuance of her experiences, to explore topics as deep and dark as self destruction, toxic relationships, infidelity and conjugal rape, she had to write a completely Francophone album.

"This album is about extremes," she says. "lt talks about things that I've experienced. English, I'm good at writing it, I think, but I haven't mastered it completely. … For this record, since the subjects are so intense and they're so hard and they're so personal to me, I needed to do it in French. I needed to master it completely … for me to regain control over my experiences."

The result is, En cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé, which translates to "During storms, this garden will be closed.

It's something she read on a sign in Paris, and it stopped her in her tracks.

"That phrase has been a mantra to me, kind of like a warning that if the world around you is shutting down, you should not shut down yourself, just open up and get some help," she says.

Martin was at a point where she wanted to quit being a performer. Touring was wearing her down, and she she was in a "hole of I don't know who I am anymore," she says.

Her plan was to focus on playing a role behind the scenes, whether it was writing music for other musicians or for film and video game scores. In other words, she wanted to help others express themselves. That's how she ended up as a judge on France's reality singing show, Nouvelle Star, which is also where she came to realize that she wasn't ready to leave just yet.

"This guy from Venezuela came and sang one of my songs and explained that he learned French through me, and it was such a great moment for me personally," she says. "I realized I still had a role to play in people's lives, and that was it for me, I went ahead."

— Produced by Cora Nijhawan and Mitch Pollock

Coeur de Pirate, Dans la Nuit

Coeur de Pirate, Prémonition