Christine and the Queens — the project of French artist Chris (born Héloïse Letissier, now using he/him pronouns and the name Chris) — arrived in anglophone consciousness with Tilted at a rain-soaked, post-Brexit Glastonbury in 2016, and the song did exactly what great pop songs are supposed to do: it made difference feel survivable. That moment, and that song, weren't a fluke. They were the most visible peak of a body of work that had been building since 2014's Chaleur humaine, a debut that refracted love, heartbreak and loneliness through a lens strange enough to feel genuinely new. The ranking correctly places People, I've Been Sad at the top. Released just before Covid lockdowns, it is scalpel-sharp in its emotional brutality and yet featherlight in execution — glowing synths, slow-burn pace, an empathetic string section that creates what the piece calls 'luxuriant sadness.' What makes it the best thing Chris has made isn't just the emotional precision; it's that the song refuses to wallow. Introspection without self-pity is a genuinely difficult thing to pull off, and this song does it every time. Tilted at number two is defensible but feels slightly safe. Its 2016 Glastonbury performance elevated it beyond its recorded form — 'I am actually good / Can't help it if we're tilted' works as mantra in a crowd context in a way that the studio version only partially delivers. Full of Life at three is the more formally ambitious choice: built around Pachelbel's Canon in D, inspired by Björk, recorded as if inside a cathedral. It's the song where Chris's grief processing reaches its most architecturally imposing form. The middle tier — Paradis perdus, 5 Dollars, Gone with Charli xcx — reveals Chris's willingness to source material from unexpected places. Paradis perdus samples Christophe's 1973 Jean-Michel Jarre-produced track and interpolates Kanye West's Heartless in the chorus; that the juxtaposition works at all is a minor miracle, and that it produces something genuinely melancholy rather than clever is a larger one. 5 Dollars, stripped back to Bruce Springsteen melodic simplicity crossed with Arthur Russell's sad-happy mix, explores the artist-consumer relationship with a directness that most pop songs about fame fumble into self-pity. The lower half of the list — particularly the Hopecore material at the bottom — reveals the cost of creative restlessness. Hopecore, released under the name Rahim Redcar, was lo-fi, roughly drawn, and deliberately stripped of the sophisticated pop architecture that made the earlier albums work. Deep Holes and Forgive 8888888 are interesting as documents of a particular moment in Chris's life, but interesting-as-documents and interesting-as-songs are different things. The ranking is honest about this. Catching Feelings with Cerrone (2025) is the most fun entry — 'dickheads' over a perfect reconstruction of a lost early-80s pop smash is a genuinely joyful gear-change — which makes its placement at eleven feel like the list slightly undervaluing directness. What the full catalogue demonstrates, taken together, is a consistent set of preoccupations — shame, gender, loneliness, grief, the relationship between performer and audience — expressed through a pop sensibility that keeps getting stranger and more personal without losing the melodic thread. Jonathan, the bonus track featuring Perfume Genius, is the best evidence of what happens when Chris finds a collaborator operating at the same emotional register. Mike Hadreas's vocal and Chris's wordless coda together produce something that neither artist would have made alone. Gone with Charli xcx works for the same reason in the opposite direction: Charli's metallic brashness and Chris's undulating funk create a productive friction that neither catalogue fully contains.
