Soko has shared the video for her cover of “Diabolo Menthe” by iconic French singer-songwriter Yves Simon. The original song is the title track of a cult 1977 French film Peppermint Soda directed by auteurist Diane Kurys. The song was written for the film with Simon taking inspiration from a fan letter he once received from an enamoured high school girl.

Soko’s cover will feature on forthcoming compilation album Génération(s) éperdue(s) is a tribute album to the now 70-something idol. A compilation of Yves Simon’s greatest songs covered by a new generation of French artists, including Soko, Christine and The Queens, Woodkid, Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains, Lilly Wood & The Prick, Lescop, Moodoid, and a unique featuring by actor Louis Garrel.

The title of the album draws from Yves Simon’s latest written work, published in October 2017 – an illustrated collection of lyrics from 140 songs off his repertoire.

Soko on “Diabolo Menthe”:

​”This is the first video I haven’t directed myself. But because Diabolo Menthe is a cover (of French artist Yves Simon) it felt more inviting for a collaboration. I wanted to tell the intimate story of what it feels like to live in a house full of ghost relationships from the past. They may have moved out and moved on, but all the memories keep haunting you every day.

I thought Drake Doremus was perfect to work with on this as his movies are real tear jerkers. He’s the best at capturing very real and poetic moments of intimacy, closeness, love, obsessive love, the end of love. He casted Maria Valverde to play one of my lovers, and Pete Chekvala and Odessa Young were already my friends. They are all such great actors that the process was very natural. It was shot in one day in LA, at my friend’s house in Silverlake where I used to live.

The song is about a teenage girl named Anne who writes about her heartache in her notebooks. I wrote so many songs about this exact thing in that exact house, so the location was definitely charged with memories and history of most of the significant relationships I’ve had in Los Angeles.

I first watched Diabolo Menthe by Diane Kurys ages ago and I loved the mood, the innocence of those girls and their sense of adventure. It made me nostalgic of my own years as a teenager and listening to the soundtrack was a way to reexperience the movie. So I started listening to more Yves Simon and covered his song ‘Diabolo Menthe’ on acoustic guitar and put it on YouTube. Yves Simon really liked my cover. I couldn’t believe he had even heard it ! Then I got to finally do a proper recording of it, and I felt like I was that 13 year old girl in the movie, crying in her journal about her heartaches. To me, it’s the perfect song about the innocence and sadness of teenage years.”