Some artists arrive with a sound. Universatine arrives with a universe.
Long before her debut album takes shape, the French singer-songwriter is already sketching the emotional architecture of a world where imagination isn’t an aesthetic choice: it’s a survival instinct. Her songs move like private confessions whispered into the dark, transforming love, doubt and vulnerability into something strangely communal. They don’t ask to be decoded; they ask to be felt.
There’s a rare kind of sincerity running through her work: one that resists the pressure to perform, to explain, or to chase the algorithm. Instead, Universatine writes as she lives: instinctively, letting melodies become memories before she fully understands what they’re trying to say. The result is music that feels less like storytelling and more like remembering something you’ve never lived.
In conversation with Vanity Teen for the column A day with, she opens the doors to the universe behind her name: a place shaped by childhood wonder, Wes Anderson daydreams, visual art, and the quiet belief that the most powerful songs don’t give us answers. They simply remind us that our own stories have always been there, waiting to be heard.
Your music often feels like reading pages torn from a diary. When did you realize that vulnerability could become your strongest artistic language rather than something to protect?
I think that’s a very accurate way of describing it. My songs really are like my diary—except I’ve never actually kept one. Music naturally became that space for me.
Most of the time I come home late, sit down at the piano, and the words simply arrive. I don’t overthink them. Only afterward do I realize how much they’ve revealed about my own life, sometimes exposing deeply personal details I wasn’t even consciously aware of.
I truly embraced that intimacy when I started sharing my songs with other people. It was unsettling at first, but I realized that vulnerability is exactly what makes my music feel honest. If I tried to hide it, I think I’d lose both the reason I write and the reason people connect with my songs.
The name Universatine already sounds like a world of its own. If someone could step inside that universe for five minutes, what would they see, hear and feel?
I think they’d enter a place where imagination rules everything.
Before music, I spent a lot of time exploring visual arts, and that still shapes everything I create today. I imagine a surreal, ever-changing world filled with colors, smiles, and spaces where creativity can exist freely.
It’s a place where imagination literally transforms reality. If you believe in something strongly enough, the landscape changes around you.
I love holding onto that childlike ability to dream without limits.
You’d hear voices singing together simply for the joy of sharing something beautiful. Universatine would be a timeless place where people come to create, to feel, and to leave believing that anything is possible.
Your songs seem to exist somewhere between certainty and doubt. Do you write to find answers, or simply to become more comfortable with questions?
That’s a beautiful question, and honestly I don’t think I have a definitive answer.
I never begin writing with a specific conclusion in mind. I simply follow whatever comes naturally, and only afterward do I realize what the song is actually about.
Writing helps me discover myself, but it also helps me understand other people, their emotions, the way they love, the way they experience life.
Sometimes it gives me answers.
More often, it gives me even better questions.
Every artist has an obsession that quietly shapes everything they create. What’s yours?
Love.
In every possible form.
No matter where a song begins, I almost always find myself returning to love—love for another person, for ourselves, for memories, or even for the small things surrounding us.
It’s an emotion that fascinates me because it’s universal, yet every single person experiences it differently.
Your music often feels cinematic. If this chapter of your life were directed by a filmmaker, who would it be?
Without hesitation: Wes Anderson.
I love the way every tiny detail carries meaning in his films. There’s poetry, fantasy, and emotion hidden beneath incredibly precise aesthetics.
I imagine this chapter unfolding inside an amusement park, with a roller coaster becoming its central metaphor.
There are highs and lows, excitement, uncertainty, bright moments and melancholic ones.
But if you look closely, every detail quietly carries hope.
We’re living in a time where artists are expected to explain themselves constantly online. Do you think mystery has become a luxury?
I think mystery has always been a luxury for public figures.
Since I’m only at the beginning of my journey, I haven’t had to confront that question in a very concrete way yet.
If I ever choose to keep parts of my life private, it won’t be to appear mysterious. It will simply be to protect myself, the people I love, and our privacy.
What’s most important to me is staying sincere in everything I choose to share.
If trends, algorithms and expectations disappeared tomorrow, would your music sound different?
Honestly, I think I’d make exactly the same music.
Of course I think about trends, visibility, algorithms—they’re impossible to ignore.
But I never want them to become the reason I create.
For me, the most important thing is building a universe that feels uniquely mine.
The artists who changed my life, like Les Rita Mitsouko, never inspired me because of one successful song. They inspired me because of the worlds they created, the emotions they awakened, and everything their music allowed me to imagine.
I truly believe it’s possible to pursue this career while remaining completely faithful to yourself.
Imagine someone discovers Universatine ten years from now. What’s the one feeling you hope survives time?
I’d love my songs to have the power to bring forgotten images back to life.
A face.
A street.
A summer.
A conversation.
A moment someone thought they’d lost forever.
To me, the most beautiful songs are the ones that make us feel like we’re telling our own story through someone else’s music.
CREDITS
Art Director & Make-Up Artist: Jasmine Bouguermouh
Talent: Universatine
Photographer: Axelle Leskerpit
Stylist: Lou Laporte
Hair Stylist: Enzo Bodin
Photographer Assistant: Lora Carpet
Stylist Assistant: Myriam Lalet