Pierre Della Monica is a graduate of EDHEC and SKEMA, but if he is known today, it is for his group, Bon Entendeur, which he co-founded with Arnaud Bonet and Nicolas Boisseleau. The musician looks back on his studies, the beginnings of Bon Entendeur and the release of the new album.
The studies of Pierre Della Monica
You started with a stint in business school. Why go this route?
It was a time when I didn’t know what to do. I had to choose a course and so I opted for an IUT in Marketing Techniques so as not to close any doors for me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do afterwards, I chose EDHEC to study finance, for a year, because I knew I could move from finance to marketing easily. I did an internship at Société Générale, then I went into marketing. I then joined SKEMA for my final year, to join my colleagues from Bon Entendeur in Paris.
The beginnings of Bon Entendeur
How did you meet the other members of the group?
I met Arnaud in Aix-en-Provence when I was in 4e. We both lived there. I knew Nicolas thanks to his little brother. I was in his class, in integrated prep at ESEO in Angers.
How did your story with music begin?
My parents all play music. My father plays the violin, my mother and my brother, the piano. I play guitar. When we launched Bon Entendeur in 2012, we didn’t expect to go this far at all! At first, we just selected music that we liked to share on social networks. It was more of a blog.
How would you describe the Bon Entendeur concept and style?
Style is first and foremost about conveying waves feel good. Bon Entendeur is positive music that makes you want to smile, that conveys something pleasant. We unearth old French sounds to rework them and give them this energy. If our first album was very French, in our second album, we will also find foreign sounds.
The initial concept is original: you carry out interviews with personalities set to music using mixtapes. How did you come up with the idea?
Between 2012 and 2013, we made playlists based on titles that we liked, but we knew we had to evolve. We wanted to find a way to mix sounds together and make a mixtape by adding an original and cool touch. At that time, it was the mixtape boom. It was also the time when DSK was entangled in the Sofitel affair. So we had fun taking his speech where he was tongue-in-cheek and putting it in the introduction to our first mixtape.
We had success that we didn’t expect. So we thought about what we could highlight and we followed up with Fabrice Luchini, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Dujardin… That’s where the concept was born. Originally, the interview excerpts were only released as an introduction to the mixtape. From now on, we find them throughout the mixtape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqaS6AAGnQw
Round trip : Bon Entendeur’s first album
In 2019, you released your first album with iconic reworks, including Time is Goodwhich is enjoying incredible success. Did you expect this?
No way. You never expect such success. You shouldn’t make music for success. But, if he comes, that’s great. It was interesting to see how Time is Good has had several lives. We officially released it independently in 2017. It was our first remix. In 2019, when we joined Columbia, it had a second life. It was a real sounding board. We had access to televisions and radios and he started to appear on Instagram, in stories.
Did you get tired of this song?
We inevitably get tired of it. When the album comes out, we’ve already heard so much of our sounds that we can almost no longer take it. We have to play Time is Good at every concert. In 2019, we had 150 concerts, we must have done the same gesture 150 times to play this song, but we never tire of the audience’s reaction when they hear it!
Zoom on MidnightBon Entendeur’s second album
The second album is coming soon. How would you describe it?
When we started working on Midnighttwo problems faced us. The first is that we shouldn’t reproduce our first album. The other problem was the construction of this album. We were very proud of our first album, but we didn’t imagine playing it in public. After two years of touring, we realized that it was not always easy to offer albums, especially in DJ sets or in clubs. So we wanted to make more dynamic pieces, closer to what we mix.
For Midnightwe keep the DNA of the first album, that is to say the desire to remix old French songs, but not only that! There is a day phase which looks a lot like Round trip and a night phase in which we tried remixes of English or even Ivorian artists. We have opened our spectrum. We thus created much punchier songs.
In Midnight, we also find original creations: a piece with Sofiane Pamart and another with MC Solaar. Why not offer more pieces of your creation?
There are a lot of remixes on both our albums. We are still trying to find a way to create a bridge between our album and our mixtapes. On Round tripwe have produced original productions thanks to Interviews and we wanted to find a similar device. On Midnightthese are pieces in their own right. For Sofiane Pamart, we fell in love with the piano piece he sent us. For MC Solaar, we contacted him directly. We sent him an original creation and he gave us a text in two takes.
Are we going to offer more original creations? Today, we spend our lives looking for old sounds for our mixtape, but we tend towards original productions. Maybe we will get there little by little, but the remix exercise is not the same and we like it a lot for the moment. We enjoy finding old sounds and seeing how we can bring them up to date.
You worked on this album during the crisis. Did it have an impact on his writing?
We had a lot more time to do it. With the tour planned for 2020, we would never have been able to release and present a new album in June 2021. We had bubbling energy! We went from a radiant summer to a succession of confinements and this unspent energy ended up in the night part of our album. We wanted it to move, to dance and I think that will be felt.
How do you feel about returning to shows?
On the one hand, I’m super excited. I can’t wait to see the public, to take the train, to meet up with my friends. On the other hand, I’m stressed. Touring imposes a crazy rhythm on us: we mix, we go to bed, we take the plane, we mix, we go to bed, we take the plane… I have the impression that I will never have the energy to face these huge tours. But, as soon as we find ourselves in front of the public, all doubts will disappear. I’m eager to.
The future of Bon Entendeur
What’s next for Bon Entendeur?
A year ago, I would have said: summer tour or winter tour. Today, we have the impression that we can only express ourselves six months a year. Little by little, the gauges will increase, we will be able to do shows outdoors, then indoors. Summer will be nice, but we’ll have to see what happens in winter.
Regarding a future album, for now, Midnight is not out yet. For the moment, we have blank page syndrome. We are going to release this second album, present it, digest it and gain maturity, then we will gradually think about the third album.
And what next for you?
Today, Good Hearing has taken over everything in my life. I spend a lot of time with Arnaud and Nicolas. We get along very well outside of Bon Entendeur. It’s a funny life, because you don’t even know when you’re working or when you’re stopping working. Bon Entendeur is deeply intertwined in my personal life. But we have other plans.
We also have Belle Époque, a young company which adds sound to spaces such as restaurants or bars. I believe a lot in this company which is very sustainable and does not depend on our fans. Belle Époque is also much less sentimental and more pragmatic and it is a society that evolves in an area that pleases me.
