Cœur Fou and Lucie Goddard on the new Club Med Live experience, building a positive community and performing in the most beautiful locations

You must know Club Med as the ultimate destination for a lifestyle vacation. But Club Med is also—and always has been—a pristine home base for artists and creative individuals to come exchange and build community. Thanks to the Club Med Live programme, we encourage artists to pursue self-exploration and uncover how their art speaks and sounds to new multicultural and multigenerational audiences.

We believe that creation is influenced by the change of surroundings that traveling brings. Creating is also enjoying a new vibe in the sun, in the mountains, pausing and having fun. So naturally, this sort of indulging is exactly what we envision for the artists participating in the Club Med Live programme.

Parisian DJ duo Cœur Fou was lucky to find themselves in Magna Marbella in May of last year for their first Club Med Live residency, celebrating the reopening of our Resort in Andalucía. With access to the full amenities of Club Med, from spa and golf to gourmet tapas, they were very much in a pinch-me-I-can’t-believe-it’s-true state.

Since, they have also travelled to Club Med, Kani—in the Maldives—for two weeks and Guillaume (one half of the duo) is just back from our Summer Mountain Festival in the French Alps at Grand Massif Samoëns Morillon. Their next destination for the summer is Mauritius.

We caught up with Cœur Fou and Lucie Goddard, Head of Music & Artistic Programme & Experience EMEA to learn more about how Club Med Live is all about collaboration, how travelling with Club Med inspired the duo’s music and the comfort they found creating art while having everything taken care of.

Lucie, can you tell us more about the programme Club Med Live (formerly Club Med Talents)?

Lucie Goddard: The relationship Club Med has with artists is a long-lasting love affair. Music and arts have always played a major role in our guests' experience and in our brand’s DNA. Fun fact: in the 70s, disco king Marc Cerrone, who at the time was dreaming of a career in music, worked as a music booker for Club Med. Because happiness is at the core of our mission, we are delighted to have invested so much joy and effort into Club Med Live; our music and creative programme designed as an artistic residency, combining travel and creation in the most stunning places on earth. Artists are invited to perform live during the one-week stay on an open stage and to develop their artistic projects freely by creating unique content, test new formats, new audiences, get inspired or just relax with their crew or loved ones.

Can you explain why you have decided to rebrand the programme?

Lucie Goddard: With the evolution that we operate to pivot our artistic direction towards our Resorts to offer our guests even more emotions and surprises, we are looking to attract new profiles. We wanted a worldwide ‘label’ name that reflects both the depth of our roster from emerging projects to headliners and the artistic disciplines (live music bands, DIY craftmakers, DJs, visual arts). We also wanted to highlight the experience using make a smart & easy branding to catch for all countries. To be as meaningful as possible, we involved our Artist members, Partners and Colleagues from other parts of the world in the choice of brand name and baseline.

To celebrate this evolution, we were proud to partner with cult media platform Radio Nova which we've brought on board for the Summer Mountain Festival last June.

Could you define your artistic curation?

Lucie Goddard: Regarding our artistic direction, obviously, the musical style must also be adapted to the expectations of our present and future customers. We are interested in emerging projects with original creations as well as more conventional artists who play inter-generational, all-time classics.

Freedom is in our DNA, and so we strongly believe in offering our artists a choice of destinations, which translates into a desire to create surprises for our guests. Once on site, they discover the music and artistic programme that we have concocted for them.

Above all, Club Med Live is about human to human relationships. I met Nicolas and Guillaume of Cœur Fou (Instagram @coeur_fou_) through mutual connections: Bon Entendeur and Charlotte Fever, who are already members of the programme). We are a community!

How do you select the artists for the programme?

Lucie Goddard: We favour human values before even looking at projects. Culture fit is always the starting point. Club Med places conviviality at the heart of its lifestyle. Both the artists, who are residents (and by extension nearly part of the G.O team) and guests, must embody these values of conviviality and kindness, and adopt a flexible posture to adapt to any situation.

So, we make sure beforehand that they will fit in well with the Club Med spirit and enjoy it. The first residency always serves as a "crash test" in everyone's mind. As of today, we count on 3000+ projects!

For those who are curious, discover a selection of artists from our roster on our playlist: Club Med Live

Cœur Fou, tell us more about you. What was the catalyst for working together?

Cœur Fou (Nicolas): We met when studying for a Master's degree and became very close because we had a fundamental point in common: our passion for music and the piano. We are both trained pianists. One summer, I had just ordered some equipment, and I remember saying to Guillaume "it's time to get started". From there, we put together a first hybrid live and quickly got a date at the Greenroom Festival alongside Étienne de Crécy and Oxmo Puccino. We were beginners, but everything quickly accelerated.

The message conveyed by Club Med Live programme for young creation must particularly resonate with you?

Cœur Fou (Guillaume): In the beginning, we looked for media exposure to give us momentum and opportunities. This helped us get book fairly quickly. But we are still emerging artists, so the Club Med Live initiative certainly speaks to us. It allows us to test our sets and be in an ever-evolving state of mind to better shape our duo.

Cœur Fou (Nicolas): We love that is all about genuine encounters. Lucie had seen us perform at the Pete The Monkey festival alongside the TafMag DJ Babes. She called me and said, “what do you think about doing a back-to-back set again for the Magna Marbella Resort opening?”. We said yes right away!

Do you think that travelling with Club Med Live has influenced your style?

Cœur Fou (Guillaume): In the Maldives (Kani), we developed a format called the “Sunset Ritual”, a beach party concept during the golden hour with good music, local vibes and delicious food. We felt so honored and excited to try a new format for Club Med.

Cœur Fou (Nicolas): We needed to adapt to an audience and to an atmosphere different from ours but also to go further in the sourcing of our tracks. Now, these are sounds that we re-use in our sets in France!

Lucie Goddard: Inviting artists to step out of their comfort zone is an asset of Club Med Live residencies, it helps to nurture their projects… and sometimes, ego!

Cœur Fou (Guillaume): On my last residency (during the Summer Mountain Festival) Nicolas wasn't able to accompany me because we had a rescheduled date in Paris. Playing alone was a new experience. The festival also gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people; some of them with whom I have reconnected in Paris.

What makes Club Med Live different and superior to other programmes or real life?

Cœur Fou (Nicolas): We haven't had the opportunity to take part in similar residency programmes yet. We used to do our own residencies in tiny houses that we booked independently. The major difference is that at Club Med Live we don't have to think about anything except our music. The teams take great care of us, so that we can exclusively concentrate on our performance. The fact that it’s all inclusive makes it even more perfect! In addition, the charm of this residency format is that it removes all barriers between us and the audience, creating an immediate, exclusive and unprecedented connexion with the client. More than a residency or a vacation, these are memories for life.

Cœur Fou (Guillaume): We were also able to enjoy all the sports facilities (I took my diving PADI diploma in Kani). Most importantly, it really allowed us to take a step forward in our project. In Spain, we mixed for the first time with TafMag DJ Babes with whom we have now formed a collective called Amour d’Amour. We together play in clubs, festivals and events in Paris. Merci, Club Med Live!

If you were to go back for the first time, what would you do differently?

Cœur Fou (Nicolas): We wouldn't change a thing.

Cœur Fou (Guillaume): As Nicolas says, it was perfect! We are booked again this summer and are so excited. We're off to Mauritius for a new residency! It's an opportunity to discover yet another country and a new audience, which I'm sure will be different from the Maldives or Samoëns (Alps). I’m also so pumped to reconnect with Caroline Arditti, with who I had great conversations. Add to that the fact that we're changing clubs every week!

Lucie, how can artists join Club Med Live programme?

Lucie Goddard: The adventure always begins by sending the project to the 

ClubMedLive.fr platform. For bands, we recommend having a leader to act as mediator. If the profile matches our Resorts' artistic direction expectations, the project is validated, and the artist enters their availability and preferred destinations. The programming team then suggests booking options and magic happens.

What can we expect to see in the programme's future?

Lucie Goddard: Even before the rebranding, we worked on the strategic repositioning of the programme, its associated tools and processes, its artistic direction and its ecosystem of partners such as Groover, Sacem Plus, or Traverses by My Little Paris. In the end, this new branding is just the beginning of an unprecedented adventure in which we will be focusing on the impact we have on our artists’ projects. First of all, we're going to work on scaling the programme so that it's available all over the world, offering even more travel and residency opportunities. Then, with a roster of over 3,000 artists and a growing network of internal and external partners, we want to activate the community to broaden the field of possible collaborations. On the agenda: events, masterclasses, festivals, original content, and much more! Finally, we'll always be on the lookout for the new seeds of tomorrow. Come enjoy the ride with us!

Cœur Fou, what's your favorite Club Med Live memory?

Cœur Fou (Guillaume): Our last night at Club Med Kani, gave out the same ecstasy and adrenaline as when we play in a club in front of an audience, although it was a livestream and we were alone. We were on a heavenly beach, with an incredible view, in the middle of a heart drawn in the sand, filmed by three cameras and a drone. It took us a few minutes to come down from that moment. Pure magic!

Club Med Kani - Coeur Fou live session