Do we like Christine and the Queens?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record on both tests, nothing harmful found, and a public career spent on queer visibility; the score stops short of top marks because the sourcing for the recent years is thin.
Christine and the Queens is the stage name of a French singer-songwriter from Nantes, who now performs as Redcar and uses he/him pronouns. The project took off with the 2014 single Saint Claude, which reached number four in France and later went gold in the UK. That song came from a moment of guilt on a Paris bus, when passengers mocked a man and he did nothing, then wrote the song as an apology.
The breakthrough was as much about performance as songwriting. The Saint Claude video's one-man circus choreography went global, and Madonna later admitted to borrowing it for her 2015 Grammys performance. Collaborations followed with Charli XCX, including Gone on her 2019 album and New Shapes on Crash.
In 2022 the artist rebranded the project as Christine and the Queens presents Redcar, and announced he/him pronouns in a TikTok video, saying he had been a man for about a year. He told The New York Times his journey with gender had always been tumultuous. In October 2025 a fan called him a female singer on the street and he corrected them on camera, according to Paris Match.
On the harm test, the search came up empty, which here is good news. The only public spat that surfaced was a mild one: in 2019 he said he was conflicted about Taylor Swift using queer imagery, arguing queerness had become a fancy accessory used to sell things. That is a critique of commercialising queer culture, not an attack on anyone. I found no remarks against trans people, women, migrants or the planet, and no slide into conspiracy talk.
On how the artist treats people, no court cases or credible allegations from established outlets turned up. The record shows someone who has been open about being on the receiving end of prejudice: in 2019 he said he experienced homophobia during the first cycle of his debut record, and recalled being laughed at after speaking publicly about being pansexual in 2014.
The good stuff is mostly visibility, which counts. He performed at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympics, including a version of Non, je ne regrette rien, and fans called it beyond iconic. I couldn't find a dedicated charity record, so this is a story of using the stage for queer people rather than big donations.