Et je dors dans l’étreinte de tes bras
Pourquoi partir quand on peut rester
Pour toujours
In the 1964 film Les parapluies de Cherbourg, Catherine Deneuve plays Geneviève, a love-filled teenager who falls for the charming Guy Forcher, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When Guy leaves for his conscripted military service, Geneviève discovers her pregnancy and falls into a depression. At the behest of her mother who disapproved of Guy, Geneviève is faced with marrying an established man she does not love the way she loves Guy. At the church ceremony, we see a melancholic Geneviève exchange rings and start a new life with her husband.
It was that shot of Geneviève in the church that inspired Rachel Leblanc, also known by her stage persona Vanille, to make her version of that image for the cover for her third album, Un chant d’amour (2025). Rachel tells me, “I thought of the bride [Deneuve] and all the imagery of the album. I wrote the songs knowing that cover in my head of the bride.”
For Rachel Leblanc, music is a passion. When Rachel started making music, she sang in English. Though, she realized singing in English may not be for her. After making the decision to start singing in French – her first language – there was liberation of sorts. She was able to express herself more freely. And a whole new world of creativity opened up.
That does not mean, however, that Rachel stopped taking inspiration from Anglo spheres. Musically, she takes a lot of inspiration from acts like The Beach Boys to Margo Guryan and Weyes Blood to Lana Del Rey. British acts like Vashti Bunyan and Scott Walker inspire Rachel, as well.
Across Vanille’s three albums, listeners can pinpoint distinct inspirations for each body of work. With La clarière, for example, I can hear musical references to Vashti Bunyan. With Un chant d’amour, the imagery came before the sound:
“I started this project with my partner. We were listening to vinyls every morning. We were researching the sound of this new album. I knew I wanted to do a romantic album about love that touches our sensibilities from the 60s. A very melodic album that is an homage to everything I love about the 60s. There’s an elegance to it.”
Rachel’s songwriting prowess has a special poeticism that any listener can feel enchanted by, especially when listening to Un chant d’amour. “There’s something very spiritual about my songwriting. The magic of life, history, and art inspires me a lot when writing my stories. I feel like I am writing for this magical character in a movie.”
As a former cinema student, Rachel tells me that she gets struck by the films she watches. It makes sense, then, that she found such deep inspiration from Les parapluies des Cherbourg.
On Un chant d’amour, Rachel gives the listener a comprehensive romantic love album from start to end. But the songs are not monolithic. “Deux coeurs” is a gorgeous love song, yearning for her partner. For a song like “Ainsi (je vis le jour),” it’s almost like cautionary tale of love or of life decisions. What, then, inspires the vision to write these songs? Rachel says,
I think that these two songs really show the spectre of my love emotions. “Deux coeurs” is the euphoric moment of being in love. The rhythm of the song makes you want to dance. The fever of love and dancing and staying forever. You don’t even think it could end one day. But “Ainsi (je vis le jour),” it’s like you wake up in the morning and everything is behind you now. It’s the melancholia of the past. I think “Ainsi (je vis le jour)” with the strings at the end, it’s like a ballad. The girl is dancing in her room alone. It’s the sad waltz versus the euphoric dance in “Deux coeurs.”
The complementary nature of these songs shows Rachel’s understanding of love, and the different feelings that it can take you on. Un chant d’amour is an ode to love, not just in the good moments but also the melancholic moments too.
We can harken back to Les parapluies de Cherbourg here, too, particularly the final scene when Guy and Genevieve see each other again with their children after getting married to other people. Rachel says, “There’s a lot of pain but also a lot of reconnaissance. There’s a lot of gratefulness for a lot of the moments you live, even with the pain.”
As a listener of Vanille, I really believe Rachel when she says her songwriting feels spiritual. When I listen to songs like “Deux coeurs,” I feel almost spellbound as I hear Vanille sing the lines, “Entrelacement de deux coeurs qui veulent la même chose / Pluie de diamants sur nos corps pour des siècles à venir” or “Intertwining of two hearts that want the same thing, a shower of diamonds on our bodies for centuries to come.” The scene she writes feels so tender and vivid. It makes me long for my partner and our future yet to come.
She continues to tell me about her songwriting process, “I try to make a safe space of my own where everything is a shelter from the rest.” The safe space is a needle she threads across all three of her albums.
On La clairière, Rachel creates a mystical forest for the listener to escape amidst chaos of the world — an invitation for a moment of peace. And on Soleil 96, the album offers a sunny psychedelic warmth for the listener, reminiscent of The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd. All three of these albums are uniquely Rachel Leblanc. The album takes her inspirations, her creativity, and her experiences and molds them into a fully realized artistic vision that feels specific to Rachel.
Though Un chant d’amour is a romantic love story, we see again that it does not hide from the challenges that come from love. In “Ne t’en fais pas pour moi,” it feels like Vanille is learning from past experiences and trying to break out confiding spaces to reach for the sky. It really stands out on the track as it offers a layer of complexity that often comes with real life dating.
“Ne t’en fais pas pour moi” was written by Rachel but the inspiration came from something her partner wrote. Rachel says, “Every song is a souvenir from something. I remember what it’s like to end a relationship. It’s a bittersweet moment. It’s the only song that is independent…the only song without yearning, I think.”
It is necessary for the album, in my view, to have a song that shows the way that people evolve over time. “Ne t’en fais pas pour moi” is a reminder of that process that people go through in the cycles of love throughout their life. The song adds to Un chant d’amour’s overall dynamism as an album.
I told Rachel that I’d been listening to Un chant d’amour alongside Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend on repeat. While they may be completely opposite albums, both albums offer valuable insight about dating in the digital age. Dichotomy of Woman, I guess you could say.
In a time where it seems many women online feel jaded about love and dating, Un chant d’amour stands firm in its optimism. It diametrically opposes any kind of notion that love could be overrated, despite the bumps in the road. On “Lune d’argent,” Vanille sings “Il n’y a pas d’espoir sans amour,” or “There is no hope without love.”
For the lover girls who yearn for the right person, what piece of advice would Rachel give to those looking for love but lack hope? She says,
I know it can be very long before you find someone. I think everyone has their person, maybe even more than one. You just have to keep going. We still have our friends with us and love is not just about romantic love. You can find love in everything: love for your family, pet, hobbies, music, love for everything you do. Every thing you do is full of love.
As Rachel’s career evolved, so has her stance on people referring to her as Vanille. In a previous interview, she makes clear the distinction between Rachel and Vanille. But now, she says, “People call me Vanille now! But it’s okay. Before I used to say my name is Rachel but now I just embrace it. With this album now more than ever, I’m such a character even with the cover.”
Out of curiosity, I ask if the character on the cover Un chant d’amour has a name. She says jokingly, “If she had a name, she would be called Elizabeth, because that’s my second name. And it’s like, she’d be Elizabeth, the Princess of Vienna.”
The same evolution applies to Vanille’s aesthetics. There is a multifaceted approach to creation and aesthetic. Even though much of it is based in the days of yore, there are few modern trends that Rachel finds inspiration from. Coquette, cottagecore, and high fashion from 2006 all come to mind when she lists more recent inspirations.
As Vanille and Rachel continue to evolve, I ask her what excites her most about the future. She tells me it’s, “Making music for a living. I think what would be exciting is just to have what I have now.” There’s no hiding that making music as a career is incredibly hard, not just in Canada but generally too.
Two decades ago, there were certainly more avenues for revenue but with the digitization of the music industry and loss of cultural spaces, the sustainability of a career as a working musician has become more difficult than before. Supporting artists like Rachel is more important than ever.
Un chant d’amour brings an effervescent approach to romantic love that is so needed in 2026. In a sea of artists, Vanille stands out as a singular unique voice breathing new air into the folk/dream pop space. She knows her stuff and it shows across her music. Each record stands as a body of work with a defined point of view. With undeniable talent, I can’t wait to see where Rachel goes next. It’s only up from here.
Merci beaucoup, Rachel, de m’avoir parlé! Follow Rachel on Instagram and visit her website.
You can listen to Un chant d’amour below or wherever you get your music! Let me know what you think of this album and interview below!
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