Yelle - Biography
By Joanna Ricco
Making French lyrics stick in the ears of American kids who maybe took one year of Spanish in high school is Yelle’s specialty. Yelle is the combination of Julie Budet (who also goes by the name Yelle individually), GrandMarnier, and Tepr. GrandMarnier, best known for his production skills, plays drums during live Yelle performances and Tepr, who came into the fold as a journalist, plays keyboards for the group.
Budet was born on January 17, 1983 in Saint-Brieuc, Bretagne, France. The name she has chosen, Yelle, is a variation of the acronym YEL – You Enjoy Life. The extra “l” and “e” were added in an attempt to feminize the acronym and make it sound more plausible as a girl’s name. Like many young electro and dance singer-songwriters to emerge over the last several years, Yelle came to the attention of the public via a song she posted on MySpace, the popular American social networking site. The track was called “Short Dick Cuizi,” an attack on Cuizinier, an MC in the Parisian Hip-Hop group TTC. The track, after getting repeated play via MySpace, became a hot internet meme, only to be reconfigured lyrically to become Yelle’s first officially released single, “Je Veux Te Voir” (“I Want to See You”). The remade song featured samples from the 1994 club hit by 20 Fingers, “Short Dick Man,” and got heavy rotation on MTV, making the song accessible to Americans despite its French lyrics.
Teaming up with producer and longtime friend GrandMarnier, Yelle put together her debut album Pop-Up, released by Astralwerks in 2007. The album peaked at number 61 on the French Top 100 Albums Chart. In the United Kingdom, the album was originally released only as a digital download. The packaged version of the album was finally made available that spring.
In 2008, Lily Allen and Friends, the BBC Three series hosted by snarky British singer-songwriter Lily Allen, invited Yelle to perform. It marked Budet’s first appearance on UK television. Only one month later, Yelle was named Artist of the Week on MTV, meaning that she was played during network identification ads from March 24th through March 30th. Later in the year, Yelle’s single “A Cause des Garcons” was used to open up the Moschino Spring Summer 2008 runway show and in an ad for Canadian telecommunications giant Telus. A remix of the song by Riot in Belgium made its way onto the soundtrack for the Electronic Arts console game Need for Speed: Pro Street.
Finding even more commercial success with her songs, “Je Veux Te Voir” was used in the HBO show Entourage in a scene in which the cast arrives at Cannes Film Festival. Clothing retailers the Gap and H&M also found harmony with Yelle in the summer of 2008, adding her “Ce Jeu” to the stores’ soundtracks. In February of 2009, Yelle appeared on American late night program Last Call with Carson Daly on NBC and performed “Ce Jeu.” She had appeared on the program once before to perform “A Cause des Garcons.”
Yelle cites her influences as being as varied as Warren G and Cyndi Lauper, but with tremendous credit given to Daft Punk. These musical influences have no doubt also influenced Yelle’s other ventures, which includes a clothing line with GrandMarnier and Tepr. The group’s style is rooted in the loud, neon, pop graphics of mid-Eighties and early-Nineties dance club wear, historic periods for which the three would have still been in elementary school. Budet has been noted as a fan of designers JP Lespagnard, JC de Castelbajac, Jeremy Scott, and Andrea Crews, all of whom are known for a retro, unorthodox, and fun approach to apparel design. Yelle maintains a website (www.recreation-center.com) from which some of her designs can be seen and purchased as band merchandise. Yelle even joined in on the MySpace Fashion webisode blog “The Fit,” taking cameras along as she set foot on the streets of Los Angeles, California for the first time.
Recent diversions for Yelle include a remix of Katy Perry’s song “Hot N Cold” and finding her song “A Cause des Garcons” in a mashup with Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” thanks to ABX of The Hood Internet. Early in 2009, Yelle released a new version of “Ce Jeu” in which Chali 2na of Jurassic 5 lends some vocals. Later in the year, Yelle was nominated along with Santigold, Morgan Page, and Lady Gaga for Best Break-Through Artist for the 2009 International Dance Music Awards. Lady Gaga took the award, but Yelle’s time in the spotlight is far from over.