Les Rita Mitsouko – C’est comme ça

Ringer’s bass line, Mondino’s clip

In November 1986, Les Rita Mitsouko released C’est comme ça on Virgin. It was the second single from The No Comprendo, the album that had come out on 20 September 1986. On the LP it is track three and runs 4 minutes and 53 seconds. A longer version, about eight minutes, went out on a 12-inch. The B-sides were Don’t Forget the Night and Clown de mes malheurs. Fred Chichin and Catherine Ringer wrote it. They produced it with Tony Visconti. The recording was done at Studio Garage in Paris and at Studio Good Earth in London. The first single from the album, Andy, had come out in June and stopped at number 19 in France. C’est comme ça was the one that stayed.

Ringer plays the bass, and she has said she found the rhythm of the refrain. The final guitar solo is by Sam Smith, an English session guitarist who also worked on Marc & Robert, not the pop singer who later used the same name. Chichin plays guitar and keyboards on the album. Visconti plays bass, drums and strings on various tracks. The beat stays quick, and Ringer’s vocal sits in front of it. The refrain is the title, four words, repeated.

The lyric is short and strange. It talks about a secret that cuts and gives, about venom, and about the trouble when there is no pleasure. Years later Ringer said those words pointed to sexual violence she had suffered as a teenager, and to the silence around it. That reading is not spelled out on the 1986 sleeve. On the record, the arrangement stays bright and the chorus is easy to shout.