Earlier this year, Grace Jones brought Sky Ferreira, Peaches, Skunk Anansie and more to the Southbank Centre for the 27th edition of Meltdown Festival – the longest-running artist-curated music festival in the UK. Now, Christine and the Queens (AKA Redcar, or Héloïse Letissier) has been announced as the brand new curator of Meltdown 2023.

The announcement comes ahead of the French pop star’s debut performance at the Southbank Centre tonight (November 22), where he will present a one-off special as his experimental persona Redcar. Featuring songs from the recently-released album Redcar les Adorables Étoiles, the sold-out show will be an exciting preview for the creative vision that Christine and the Queens will bring to Meltdown in June next year, during a ten-day celebration of music, arts, and culture.

“What an honour to be picked by the fantastical teams of the Meltdown festival to be a curator this year!” Chris says in a statement. As the festival’s youngest curator in its almost three-decade history, he joins an iconic list of past curators, including David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, and Nick Cave.

“It’s a tough thing to be a curator,” he continues. “Art wise, recently, my curating was erratic. Visceral. Sometimes regressive, back to the music I listened to when I was a teenager. A life-saviour, music. One song to soothe them all.”

“I will actually pick musicians that have some gut-wrenching quality, and I wish for all of us to stroll around in those ten days being rejuvenated by artistic gestures. Discoveries,” Chris adds, hinting at what to expect from his Meltdown line-up, which will celebrate artists who have shaped his musical identity, alongside those who continue to shape it today. “The time Meltdown takes is quite exquisite, the abundance feels appropriately generous too. We need this for ourselves, art in the city, art for the citizen, collective catharsis, a wonderful purge of the soul.”

“Long live poetry that burns and musicians crazy and brave enough to keep going – they are shaping the emotions of the future. Let’s thank them all!”

Meltdown Festival 2023 will run from June 9 until June 18, 2023, at the Southbank Centre. As media partners, Dazed will be keeping you up to date on what goes down.