20. Forgive 8888888 (2024)
Originally leaked online by the artist himself, Christine and the Queens' fifth album, Hopecore, was released under a new name of Rahim Redcar (he's now back to releasing as Christine and the Queens, and using Chris as his own name). Hopecore eschewed the sophisticated pop of his early years in favour of lo-fi, roughly drawn sonic sketches, and this flighty opener is built around ricocheting drum beat patterns that are eventually pierced wide open by laser-like synths.
19. Je te vois enfin (2022)
Upset at his label, grieving his mother and heartbroken, he released a third album, Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue), that was saturated in sadness. Created in a two-week burst, the songs often felt undercooked, or missing crucial elements – such as choruses – but the suave Je te vois enfin is a clear highlight, all slinky 80s synth-pop strutting.
18. Girlfriend (ft Dām-Funk) (2018)
If 2014's breakthrough debut album, Chaleur humaine, was slow-burning, tactile and warm, then its taut Michael Jackson-influenced follow-up, Chris, was immediate, muscular and sweaty. On this lead single, featuring US funk experimentalist Dām-Funk, Chris playfully grapples with gender norms over Chic-esque guitar riffs and a finger-snap beat.
17. Deep Holes (2024)
"I never had this faith in me / That I could be that man" – so opens Hopecore's poppiest moment, which, given it lyrically explores sexuality and gender identity over a relentless trance beat, is all relative. That it's strangely thrilling – the "fefefafa" closing mantra sounds like an incantation – says a lot about Chris's ability to surprise.
16. Narcissus Is Back (2011)
Chaleur humaine's brilliance was how it refracted typical pop subject matters – love, heartbreak, loneliness – through a more rarefied lens. On Narcissus Is Back, which uses a rib-rattling bass thump as its core, a soon-to-be-ex is placed within the context of the Greek myth of its title: a man so obsessed with his image that he kisses himself.
15. Mura Masa – Second 2 None (ft Christine and the Queens) (2017)
On this low-key highlight of producer Mura Masa's guest-stuffed debut album, Chris weaves the various shades of his voice through burbling steel pan flourishes and sudden snatches of breakbeat. Lyrically, it's brutally direct in its exploration of a relationship built on a trust that is steadily disintegrating.
14. What's-her-face (2018)
As Christine and the Queens, Chris's outsiderhood comes baked in, with that moniker a reference to the drag queens that offered him solace. On this slow-moving track, the isolation is laid bare, but with each "ever ever" in the song's coda there's also a feeling of exorcising demons by staring them full in the face.
13. A Day in the Water (2023)
Inspired by crippling grief and Tony Kushner's epic 1991 play Angels in America, Chris created the sonic equivalent of mausoleums on 2023's epic, Madonna-assisted Paranoïa, Angels, True Love. A Day in the Water shimmers like mist on a lake as Chris offers himself up to a bigger entity, away from trouble bubbling elsewhere.
12. The Walker (2018)
As with What's-her-face, Chris explores alienation and otherness on The Walker. He juts out his chin at people staring and immediately recognises the polite, don't-come-any-closer smile of confused strangers. The occasionally brutal lyrics sit in contrast to the music, which accentuates the lovely central melody with 80s drums and synth filigrees.
11. Cerrone & Christine and the Queens – Catching Feelings (2025)
As undeniably interesting as it can be to hear Chris excavate his innermost demons over increasingly knotty soundscapes, there's something thrilling about the directness of this collaboration with French disco pioneer Cerrone. Taken from their 2025 EP of the same name, Catching Feelings features Chris singing the word "dickheads" over a perfect reconstruction of a lost early-80s pop smash.
10. Jonathan (ft Perfume Genius) (2015)
Originally released in France in 2014, Chaleur humaine was repackaged the following year with a tweaked track listing that included this new track. Inspired by shame, beauty and Klaus Nomi, it's a beautiful, bruised ballad, with Mike Hadreas's emotionally swollen vocal bolstered by a quivering string section and Chris's wordless coda.
9. To Be Honest (2023)
Chris wrestles with his recent past on his version of a blown-out 80s power ballad. "It is like a movie played by another star / She's a stranger to be honest", he sings, referencing his gender transition and the fallout from his sudden fame. The musical backdrop accentuates the drama, as billowing synth chords and OTT guitar riffs crash around him.
8. Doesn't Matter (2018)
Written during a period of intense loneliness, the galloping Doesn't Matter charts a journey of sorts. With a head full of dark characters ("the unravelled ones with their hands laying bare") and thoughts of suicide, by the song's end Chris reaches for joy, imploring those that have found light to hold on to it. As with all of Chris's best songs, the thematic complexity is welded to pop brilliance.
7. Paradis perdus (2014)
Another example of crafting pop perfection from surprising source material arrives in the shape of Paradis perdus. While the verses are taken from Christophe's Jean-Michel Jarre-produced French-language 1973 song, its chorus interpolates Kanye West's 2008 single Heartless. The melancholy of the verses, in which a faded star is mourned, pairs perfectly with the grandiose sadness of West's "coldest story ever told".
6. I Disappear in Your Arms (2020)
Released in February 2020, a few weeks before global lockdown, the heartbroken La vita nuova EP took Chris's nimble physicality and gave it a dead arm. Pierced through with a chunky synth bass, and peppered with snatches of vocal cries, this menacing bop addresses a selfish lover who wants something that doesn't exist.
5. 5 Dollars (2018)
Inspired by the stripped back melodies of Bruce Springsteen, and Arthur Russell's mix of sad-happy, 5 Dollars explores the complicated relationship between artist and consumer: the kind of love money buy. As with most of second album Chris, the music is taut and sinewy, but there's a lovely rush of fresh air that arrives with the song's skyrocketing chorus.
4. Charli xcx & Christine and the Queens – Gone (2019)
Charli and Chris fuse their respective sounds – brash, metallic agitpop and decadent, undulating funk – on this hip-shaking ode to crippling anxiety. While Charli creates a horrific wall of mirrors in her verse, Chris leans into full-blown paranoia, all beady eyes staring and shadowy whisperings. The tension breaks somewhat on the chorus, but the whole thing sounds like two people hammering their way out of a metal box.
3. Full of Life (2023)
Built around Johann Pachelbel's baroque bop Canon in D, and inspired by Björk, the monumental Full of Life grapples once more with grief, but this time its foundations are solidified by the vitality that can come through great loss. Recorded as if standing in the middle of a cathedral, Chris's voice soars and sweeps, often in tandem with the sighing strings.
2. Tilted (2015)
The song that changed everything for Christine and the Queens when he performed it at a rain-soaked, post-Brexit-vote Glastonbury in 2016. A soothing balm celebrating difference, eccentricity and warding against homogenisation, it seemed like the perfect island of hope to cling to. There's something brilliantly simplistic about its chorus's mantra: "I am actually good / Can't help it if we're tilted".
1. People, I've Been Sad (2020)
Scalpel-sharp in its emotional brutality and yet somehow featherlight, People, I've Been Sad is Christine and the Queens in excelsis. Released just before Covid struck, sending everyone into their own private well of sadness, it favours introspection over wallowing. Regret, familial trauma and isolation are thus transformed into a beautiful confessional. Musically, its glowing synths, slow-burn pace and empathetic string section create a kind of luxuriant sadness that feels transportive.