Review
Genre and Mood
Beauty Freak and MaLee’s My Beauty is electro-swing as pop: a playful, nostalgic song in which the label hears the 1960s, dressed for the dance floor. Its video takes that theatrical streak into a mansion.
Song Summary
My Beauty, released on 1 December 2017 by the label Ego, was the debut single of Beauty Freak, a band from Lille formed by three French DJs, Stéphane Chenu, Ludovic Piquemal and Yann Brunissen, who wrote it together. Chenu and MaLee share the vocals. The label describes a song about the mystery of every love story that doubles as a cry for tolerance and acceptance, built from symphonic and electronic music with jazzy touches.
Musical Breakdown
The sources describe the song’s sound and image rather than its structure, so this breakdown follows what they say, not a bar-by-bar map.
Intro: A Retro Frame
The label’s pitch is an atmosphere that brings us back to 1960s sounds, with Propellerheads and Amy Winehouse named as reference points.
Main Section: Two Voices
Chenu and MaLee sing it between them; the label credits MaLee’s vocal strength with lifting the track.
The Message: A Call for Acceptance
The label likens the song to a chorus bound to broadcast a cry for tolerance and acceptance, the message the video spells out.
The Arrangement: Symphony Meets Club
The band’s stated idea is a meeting of symphonic and electronic music, in the label’s words a world where the waltz meets electronic music; no source says how that plays out bar by bar.
Concepts in Focus
MaLee is credited as a <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist, the label for a guest beside the main act. Here the credit is modest for a singer whose voice the label calls the highlight; credits describe contracts and billing as much as who carries a song.
The song found a second home as a soundtrack. In 2019 the soundtrack album of Luc Besson’s film Anna, otherwise Eric Serra’s score, included Beauty Freak’s My Beauty, in a version called the My Soul Edit. A film can give a song an audience it never had as a single.
The music video was shot in a mansion-like set and follows the daily life of two opposite families, in a nod to the Addams Family. The video turns the plea for tolerance into a story about two households that do not fit together.
Artistic Context
Beauty Freak sit in the electro-swing line that Caravan Palace – Lone Digger made famous from Paris: older pop and jazz styles reworked with electronic production. My Beauty kept growing after its release: Beauty Freak’s 2019 album Mon amour carries it again as the My Soul Edit 2018 and as an orchestral mix.
Impact and Reception
We found no critical review of My Beauty; its reach shows instead in its versions and in the Anna soundtrack, which carried it to the film’s audience. Listen for the two voices, and decide where the 1960s end and the club begins.
