Les Rita Mitsouko – Paris scratched into melody

Gibus Club, Conny Plank, Visconti, Marcia Baïla

At the Gibus Club in 1980, dancer Catherine Ringer and guitarist Fred Chichin played the first shows of the duo. They performed first as Rita Mitsouko, then as Les Rita Mitsouko, and they used Paris as both a studio and a stage: Chichin’s thin guitar and machines, Ringer’s voice moving from a cabaret growl to a sharp yelp, without smoothing either one out.

The debut Rita Mitsouko arrived in 1984, produced with Conny Plank. “Marcia Baïla” climbed to number two in France, a tribute to dancer Marcia Moretto that became a national dancefloor ritual, Mondino’s images locking the pair into visual myth. The No Comprendo (1986), with Tony Visconti, pushed further: “C’est comme ça”, “Andy”, pop that refused to sand down its edges. Marc & Robert (1988) brought Sparks onto “Singing in the Shower”, a transatlantic wink that US dance radio noticed.

They could look glamorous and still sound rough in the same song. Ringer could dress like a star and sing like a shout. Chichin wrote hooks that stay scratched: the melody sounds dragged, and it still sticks. Système D (1993) welcomed Iggy Pop on “My Love Is Bad”. Cool Frénésie (2000), La Femme Trombone (2002), Variéty (2007) kept the door open into the new century, French charts still making room for their nervous elegance.

Listen for Ringer’s voice sliding from cabaret growl to yelp without warning, Chichin’s guitar treated like a percussion desk, and production that keeps Paris club air in the mix. Conny Plank’s European precision and Tony Visconti’s glam discipline gave different albums different rooms, but the duo’s friction stayed constant. Next to polished French synth-pop or polite chanson, Les Rita Mitsouko sound like a rehearsal that stayed on the record.

Live, they were a two-person theatre company with amplifiers. Festival stages and television studios bent around Ringer’s physical comedy and Chichin’s deadpan focus. The videos, often with Mondino’s eye, treated identity as collage: clothes, gestures, city light. Their catalogue never settled into one genre alcove. New wave, funk, rock, chanson-adjacent theatre, all under one scratched signature.

Fred Chichin died in 2007. The silence afterward was part of the story. Ringer continued, carrying the repertoire like a living archive, proof that a duo’s chemistry can outlast the months of a chart run. After 2007, Ringer kept singing the old songs in public. The records still have the nervous Paris tempo, Chichin’s guitar, and a voice that does not sit politely on the beat. The singles were not retired when the chart run ended.

French pop in the eighties had plenty of polish. Les Rita Mitsouko preferred friction. They let funk basslines argue with punk timing, let synthesizers sit next to guitar scratch, let Ringer’s theatrical body rewrite what a frontwoman was allowed to do on French television. The result was not niche for long. Hits made the friction public. Kids danced to the singles in France anyway. Critics noted Conny Plank and Tony Visconti on the records of this Paris duo. Listeners heard two people with their own way of singing and playing, and the songs stayed in circulation long after those chart weeks.

On “Marcia Baïla” and “C’est comme ça” you still hear Ringer’s theatre, Chichin’s thin guitar, and a Paris duo that put impatience on a dance beat. Les Rita Mitsouko did not smooth French pop out. They left the friction in the melody.

Ringer and Chichin stayed a Paris duo, and the scratched guitar stayed on the records.

After Chichin’s death in 2007, reprises of “Marcia Baïla” kept the chorus in Ringer’s set. The scratched guitar part was still in the arrangement, the same part that had been on the 1984 single.

Their name began as a joke that stuck: Mitsouko perfume, Rita as character, a duo inventing itself as a small theatre company with guitars.

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