Interview with Sarah Cracknell, lead singer of Saint Etienne – touring Australia in November

By creammagazine, October 15, 2026

Despite having lifted their name from a French football team, Saint Etienne are as closely tied to Britain’s cultural fabric as the game of football itself. The band’s knack for marrying contemporary electronic songs with cool vintage aesthetics – as well as delivering some acoustic ditties your nan might like – saw them coming across more as nostalgia-seekers rather than Britpop puritans. And with their everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach, Saint Etienne has worked with an eclectic array of musicians and producers to further round out their sonic ventures. These include The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Richard X, Masters at Work, Eric Kupper, Tiesto, and many more.

Far from your regular guitar/bass/drums set-up, singer Sarah Cracknell and her partners in rhyme, Bob Stanley (keyboards, guitar) and Pete Wiggs (also keys) have adopted as many digital resources in their musical trajectory as they have done analogue ones.

Underpinning their unique sound is an appreciation for all manner of instrumentation – from doowop and classic jazz to acid house and trance.

Antonino Tati chats with frontwoman Sarah Cracknell to discover that she surprisingly embraces progressive technology over nostalgic samples these days, prefers intimate gigs to big outdoor ones, and likes to include more upbeat songs than low-tempo in the bands sets today.

Australian audiences will get to experience all this when Saint Etienne tour our shores in November.

 

Hi Sarah. You’re looking great.

I’m not so sure about that. It’s a bit early in the morning for me.

 

Where are you?

I live out in Oxfordshire. It’s very green and leafy and I’m kind of in the middle of nowhere, so I like that.

 

We call it ‘the country’ here in Australia. You’re out in the country, out in the sticks. Now, despite your band’s French-derived name, there is something perennially British about Saint Etienne that very much connotes London and Britain at large. Do you still wear that British badge proudly, or has Brexit gone and made a mess of British pride?

Well, I don’t want to get too much into politics, but I do think the Tories have messed up the country. As for Brexit, what a catastrophe! What a stupid idea that was. I hate the idea of not being in the European Union; I absolutely hate it. I think it was the biggest mistake the Britons ever made. Everyone wanted change overnight, and I don’t think that’s possible. I am proud to be British, and I am such a great fan of London. I don’t live that far from London, actually, just an hour away, so London has always been like a magnet for me.

 

There’s also something rather continental about Saint Etienne. Right from the opening of your debut album, ‘Foxbase Alpha’, there was French speak.

Ah yes, the French football intro. You see, Bob [Stanley, keyboardist and guitarist with the band] is a particularly big fan of football. I am a bit, but he was really into Saint Etienne – mainly because they had the coolest uniform. They had this beautiful green kit with little stripes on the sleeve. In the UK we were aware of Saint Etienne because they played against Manchester United. And that clip, that piece of radio, was a French announcer talking about football.

 

The sample clicks right over to your first single, ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’. I didn’t realise at the time that it was a cover version.

Yes, it’s a cover of a Neil Young song.

 

 

Speaking of covers, I was watching a biopic on Bob Dylan the other day. It had Timothée Chalamet playing Dylan. There’s this one scene where someone is singing in the same chords and melodic style as your song ‘Like a Motorway’.

Yes, the original melody is from a song called Silver Dagger which was sung by Joan Baez. We used the same melody but our lyrics are completely different. Our idea was to marry folk and techno, so we were taking old folk songs, changing the lyrics, and adding techno beats underneath. [Note: the ‘Motorway’ in the Saint Etienne song title was a nod to Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’, the electro pioneers’ influence evident in the pulsing, driving rhythm of the song]. We often turned to folk music for ideas – one of the reasons was because some old folk songs are out of copyright, so you can just nip the whole melody. That’s the thing about folk music as well – it’s supposed to be shared; passed down from generation to generation.

 

 

Saint Etienne’s music has done well right across the globe. You’re visiting Australia on tour this November. I believe it’s been 30 years since you last visit to these shores?

It has been nearly 30, and look… here’s our old tour itinerary. Just to remind myself, us in Australia in 1998.

[The itinerary looks quaint and even has a little spiral bind holding it together; my how media has changed.]

 

What do you think of the changes in technology, all the new devices and software that we have now? Do you like that music can be created so easily today, or do you prefer the craft of analogue production?

I think you can’t mess about with progress in technology. What else are we going to do – sit in the dark ages and not move on? I think technological progress is great. I’ve got a son who makes music, and he can make it at home or go into the studio. New technology has made things more accessible. It means people can listen to so much more.

 

Do you miss any of the analogue experience?

It was nice when I was young. It was like being in a little gang. We’d all like the same bands, and wait for the new release. You’d have to go to the record shop and buy it and get it on the Monday morning and sit in the pub and talk about what you bought. And I get that’s really charming and lovely, and I enjoyed that period of time. But it’s progress, isn’t it? Music’s now out there for everybody, and anyone can make it at home. And while there might be [some bad examples of it] out there, I think the good stuff will always rise to the top.

 

 

Saint Etienne had a great knack for finding awesome samples and incorporating these into your records.

Yes, we used to sample a lot back at the very beginning. We could do that because we weren’t restricted by being a sort of guitar, drums, bass kind of band. Our music has always been so eclectic. We don’t sample much any more.

 

“We don’t like writing lyrics that are particularly autobiographical. We like to hide behind characters, scenarios, places. Make them sound like a film story.”

 

Would you say you were part of the Britpop wave of the mid-1990s?

To be honest, I think we just kept to ourselves and stuck with what we were doing. I mean, we didn’t actively steer away from the Britpop label, but we also didn’t particularly like it because we didn’t think we fit into the Britpop scene.

 

Although you did have a bit of a shoegazer aesthetic about you.

Talking of shoegazing bands, funnily enough the drummer we’re working with at the moment, and who’ll be joining us on the shows lined up for the next year, he’s from the band Ride [ie: Laurence Colbert].

 

Nice. When you were starting out, was it a great surprise for you, say in 1994, when you first heard your songs playing on the radio?

God, yes it was. It was everything I’d ever dreamed of because I started in my first band when I was 15, and I was so desperate to be on the radio. I’d been trying to be on the radio for bloody years! So much so, that I disbanded the band I was in, and went to drama school. I thought I’m going to be an actress now because that was my first love when I was really young. I came out of drama school, and shortly after, I met Bob and Pete.

 

Where has been the oddest place you’ve heard one of your songs being played?

There’s this chain of stores called Homebase; it’s a kind of DIY shop so it’s full of power drills and lawnmowers and heavy things like that. I was in there one day and they were playing our song Hobart Paving, which is kind of, well…

 

Melancholic?

Yes. So that was odd. But maybe they played it because of the paving connection.

 

Lol. You were telling me that you graduated from drama school. Do you think this is what has lent a certain cinematic aspect to a lot of your music videos?

Probably, and also because all three of us really like film. Also, we don’t like writing lyrics that are particularly autobiographical. We like to hide behind characters, scenarios, places. Make them sound like a film story.

 

I think that’s wonderful, not just for you guys as artists, but for the listener as well, because we get to see and hear you in a variety of guises, don’t we?

I suppose so. It also means that the listener can interpret the song one way, and someone else might interpret it another way because we always make them a little vague. Our songs are often character-based or location-based, which is fun.

 

What would you say was the biggest hit that has given you the broadest audience?

I think the first song we had a proper hit with was He’s On The Phone. We did a collaboration with a French pop star called Étienne Daho, and he’s huge in France; in any French-speaking country. We were honoured that he liked us because he’s been going a lot longer than us, and so we did a kind of collaboration where he chose some of our songs, kept the melody, and changed the lyrics. That one there was originally called Weekend At Rome. Anyway, I think that was our real break.

 

 

Did you guys tour stadiums then, or were you always doing intimate gigs?

Oh, we did lots of big gigs, festivals, etcetera. We played Glasgow four or five times. But I quite like intimate gigs, if I’m honest. I just like that contact thing. I don’t like seated gigs. We’ve done tons of seated gigs, and I’ve gone right off them, because people can’t see you properly. Can’t see the whites of your eyes, you know?

 

There’s a certain absurdity that you used to get – hearing radio and advertising, back in the 1940s and ’50s. It was kitsch, if not camp. You infused a bit of that kitschness in your songs and yet made it sound so very cool.

Yes, it was very much just an aesthetic thing. I love the aesthetic of old signs, old shop signs, retro commercials, vintage adverts, whatever you want to call them.

 

“To be honest, I think we just kept to ourselves and stuck with what we were doing. I mean, we didn’t actively steer away from the Britpop label, but we also didn’t particularly like it because we didn’t think we fit into the Britpop scene.”

 

There is something nice in that nostalgic aesthetic. Do you think the new generation of music artists might ever cotton on to it? Say, Sabrina Carpenter or Dua Lipa? Or are they missing out on something that we were spoilt with in our archive digging? That beauty of nostalgia?

I don’t know. You’re probably asking the wrong person. I’ve got two sons – one is 21 and one is 24. One’s in film and the other’s is in a band. And they like both the old and the new. They’re very eclectic in what they listen to and what they watch. But I don’t really know about the Sabrina Carpenter fans. On that note, I do love Dua Lipa.

 

Same here. Tell me, with so much music and media coming at us every day, do you ever get overwhelmed by it?

Well, sometimes the media [overload] is not called for. When you haven’t asked for it, but you switch on your phone and bang, bang, bang, there’s advertising and whatnot. But I don’t get overwhelmed as much as I get irritated. And what I do to counteract that is I live somewhere like this [indicates the big green backyard behind her], here in the middle of nowhere. I go to London quite a lot and I travel, obviously. But I come back to this rural, rather quiet, idyllic place. I’m in a village, really, and so I go to the village fêtes, and it’s a very different experience to my urban experience.

 

Now, to your live shows, what can we expect from your tour of Australia in November?

We’ll be playing all the songs that people like. All the singles, and other standout tracks from the albums. And the ones we’ve picked are all pretty up-tempo so there’ll be a bit of a party atmosphere. I want to see everyone dancing, hands in the air.

 

One last question. What are your five all-time favourite albums?

Oh stop! You’re supposed to ask me that in advance! At the moment, my mind’s gone like one of those clapping monkey things with the cymbals in its hands. Can I have a think about that one and email a list to you?

 

Of course. And I look forward to seeing you when you’re in Australia.

Likewise, and thank you for the chat.

 

Here’s Sarah’s Top 5 Albums of All-Time.

Saint Etienne Australian Tour Dates:

Monday 23rd November ADELAIDE, The Gov 18+

Thursday 26th November MELBOURNE, Forum 18+

Friday 27th November SYDNEY Enmore Theatre 18+

Sunday 29th November BRISBANE, The Tivoli 18+

Tuesday 1st December PERTH, Freo Social 18+

Tickets available through destroyalllines.com.

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