Amanda Leloup
Amanda Leloup | |
|---|---|
 Amanda Leloup in 1977 | |
| Born | Between 1939 (age 84–85) and 1950 (age 73–74) |
| Occupation |
|
| Musical career | |
| Genres | |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1965–present |
| Associated acts | |
| Website | http://www.amandaleloup.gls/ |
| Governor of Nezyál | |
| In office 1 April 1970 – 1 April 1978 | |
| Personal details | |
| Political party | LSD Party |
Amanda Leloup (Gylic transcription: Amanda Lelu) is a Gylian model, singer, actress, media personality, painter, and politician. She served as Governor of Nezyál from 1970 to 1978.
One of the first intersex Gylians to achieve national fame, she started working as a model and actress in the 1960s. She was the LSD Party's candidate for Governor of Nezyál, winning election in 1970 and 1974. As Governor, she prioritised cultural policy and free love, and built close relations with significant cultural figures.
While serving as Governor, Amanda began a music career. Her debut was For Your Pleasure (1973), a critically acclaimed collaboration with Jane Birkin. Her later works focused more on pop and disco, which tended to garner less critical acclaim but greater commercial success. Her musical career was marked by her scandalous personality, decadent image, and deep contralto vocals, verging on sprechgesang.
By the mid-1980s, she was a well-established media personality and successful television host. Subsequently, her musical career assumed a secondary role in comparison to her television work and painting, which she described as her biggest passion. She has also written two autobiographies. Widely recognised as an iconic figure in Gylias, her ambiguous background and precedent-setting celebrity have led to a burst of scholarship, including several biographies and the documentary I Want My Name on a Billboard.
Early life
Amanda's origins are unclear, as she has provided varying accounts of her background over the years and even kept her birth year a secret from her spouses. She famously quipped, "I've lied about everything at some point or another except my sex!". In an interview with Radix, she added:
"I've made it my life's principle that a good story is better than a boring truth, and everything in my life is fair game, except for my sex. That is the one thing I always tell the truth about, cross my heart and hope to die."
Various accounts have given her birth year as 1939, 1941, 1946, and 1950. Most biographers view the last year as implausible, as it would've meant she began her career as a teenager. Her birth place is similarly unknown; it is generally considered to be in the Free Territories, but rumours have circulated that she was born in the Nerveiík Kingdom or Molise. Her parents divorced later, and she stated in 1976 that they had both died. Even whether "Amanda Leloup" is her birth name is a matter of conjecture.
She was born intersex, describing herself as "fortunate to have escaped childhood with no surgeries, thank the spirits". She learned French as her native language, and later became fluent in English, German, Italian, and Lusitan.
She was educated in volunteer classes, and moved often. When she was first elected Governor, ATV Nezyál managed to track down a former class colleague, who recalled her as "charming, exotic, and a good storyteller."
Sometime in the early 1960s, she settled in Kyman, where she attended art school.
Career
1960s
Amanda began working as a model in 1965. She found herself in high demand, and within two years had become at least a local celebrity. She dropped out of art school to lead a bohemian and flamboyant life. She immersed herself fully in the Groovy Gylias scene, becoming acquainted with The Beaties and fellow models Isabel Longstowe and Sara Thomas.
In addition to modeling, she worked as a nightclub performer, with a specialty in cabaret, and an actress. She had a minor role in Magical Mystery Tour and appeared in one of Annemarie Beaulieu's art hystérique shorts. She found notable popularity in pornography, starring in a series of films that cemented her scandalous sex symbol persona. Her pornographic work pushed her intersex status to the forefront, using psychedelic imagery and a barrage of visual puns to tease viewers regarding her genital ambiguity, allowing her to perform pegging scenes in particular.
1970s
Banking on her existing renown, Amanda joined the LSD Party and ran for Governor of Nezyál, winning the 1970 and 1974 regional elections. She would joke that she won the 1970 election because of one of her posters, showing her dressed in a tuxedo and posing in front of a map of Nezyál so that the region looked like her erect penis, and the 1974 election because of the cover of For Your Pleasure.
As Governor, Amanda prioritised cultural policy and free love, and built close relations with significant cultural figures. She oversaw an expansion in sex work, and established a sex museum in Kyman. She was frequently compared by commentators to fellow Governor Anaïs Nin and Ostara Mayor Hilda Wechsler, on account of their colourful public images and emphasis on arts policy.
Amanda temporarily interrupted modeling and acting while Governor, but on the other hand launched a music career. She collaborated with Jane Birkin on her debut album, For Your Pleasure, released in 1973. The album won critical acclaim for its fusion of art rock and glam rock, with Amanda's deep-throated vocals complementing Jane's avant-garde production, and in retrospect has been seen as a pioneer within Gylian dance-rock. The album cover proved as famous as the music, showing Amanda posing in a skintight leather dress leading a black panther on a leash.
Although she was unable to promote For Your Pleasure due to being an incumbent Governor, it became a modest commercial success, and is retrospectively considered her best album.
When her term ended in 1978, she chose to focus on music. She released three predominantly disco-influenced albums, I Am a Photograph (1978), Sweet Revenge (1978), and Never Trust a Pretty Face (1979), showcasing a successful combination of lush arrangements and her trademark sprechgesang vocals. Notable deviations from the formula included the rock-influenced "I Am a Photograph" and "The Stud", the cabaret-influenced "Comics" and "Miroir", and a disco cover of "Lili Marleen", an homage to her idol Marlene Dietrich.
These albums produced several hits, and were promoted with tours and music videos.
1980s
Although Amanda now achieved considerable commercial success, she faced a mixed critical reception. Critics deplored the conventional arrangements of her new songs, which lacked the avant-garde flourishes Jane had brought to For Your Pleasure, and questioned her choice of collaborators. Amanda herself tired of her disco period and began to shift styles, towards new wave-influenced pop rock with Diamonds for Breakfast (1980) and Incognito (1981), followed by the synthesizer-heavy Tam Tam (1983).
She experienced a decline in popularity, and did little promotion for Tam Tam, making it her least successful release. She put her music career on hold for a few years.
Amanda shifted her focus to television. She launched a fruitful career as a presenter and media personality, appearing regularly on ATV and GTV, and resumed work as an actress. Television helped cement Amanda's status as a household name, and honed her "wicked"-tinged image; she became known for her mischievous delight in slipping double entendres and innuendos into her dialogue. She published her first autobiography in 1985, further contributing to public interest.
In 1986, Amanda returned to music. She worked with some of Megelan's leading electronic musicians for Secret Passion, resulting in an album of Italo disco and Hi-NRG tracks that were more sexually charged ("She Wolf", "Aphrodisiac", "Desire") and playfully capitalised on her image ("I Want My Name on a Billboard", "I'm a Mistery"), plus an aggressive hard rock cover of The Troggs' "Wild Thing".
Upon release, the album earned her strongest reviews since For Your Pleasure — Musical Update joking that it was her first album since "to be listened from start to finish" —, and became her most commercially successful, distributing over 5 million copies. Six music videos were produced for the album, sexually-charged and explicit enough to be censored in foreign markets. It was accompanied by her longest tour up to that point, totaling 50 shows with legs in Cacerta, Delkora, Megelan, Akashi, and Acrea.
Having pulled off a triumphant return to music, she ended the decade in a more low-key fashion. She resumed working as a television presenter. Having long described painting as her biggest passion, she first exhibited her works in 1989, and the same year published a novel, L'Immortelle, a surrealistic tale of the torments of a woman doomed to eternal youth and beauty.
1990s
Amanda released a new album, Cadavrexquis, in 1993. Its material was dancefloor-oriented, but its synthpop style was somewhat oudated in the new decade, and it had middling reception and distribution. She did not promote it actively, concentrating on television and painting.
She made a slight return to pornographic work, hosting an erotic late night show, Coup d'œil, on 5 between 1994 and 1997.
She began a collaboration with Readymade Records, which yielded the remix album Alter Ego (1996), a new studio album Back in Your Arms (1998), and a collaborative album with Chantal Beaumont, Télégramme (2000). These albums placed her in a Neo-Gylian Sound and dance-rock context, to a positive reception. Popscene praised her collaboration with Chantal, describing the sound of their harmonising and raucuous chemistry as "Cécile heaven".
Back in Your Arms was the last album Amanda toured in support of. She announced her definitive retirement from touring in 2000. Since then, she has given sporadic concerts, but mainly performed live on television.
Amanda stood in the 1999 presidential election as the joint LSD Party–Love, Nature, Democracy candidate. She had a very strong performance, finishing second in first preference votes and reaching the final count, where she lost to incumbent Anina Bergmann. She closed out the decade by appearing in the documentary series Nation Building.
2000s–present
Amanda continues to work sporadically in music, television, cinema, and painting. After the death of Françoise Chatelain, she chose to take up the role of OMFLG–ACFEN perennial candidate for the presidency, standing in 2003, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022.
Her new musical output trended away from dance music towards more melodic and sentimental songs, including two albums of pop standards produced by Susan Shelley, Sings Evergreens (2005) and With Love (2006).
She made her theatre debut in 2009, playing the lead in the comedy Panique au ministère. The show turned out to be a huge success, enjoying a rewarding Gylian tour, and was followed by the sequel L'candidate in 2016, which poked in fun in part at her presidential candidacies.
She has written a second autobiography in 2009, and a collection of meditations and anecdotes, Délires, was published in 2018.
Musical style
Amanda has recorded in a plethora of styles, including pop, rock, glam rock, disco, funk new wave, synthpop, Italo disco, hard rock, Neo-Gylian Sound, dance-rock, jazz, cabaret, and pop standards. Most of her musical output has been pop and dance music, and she has written all of her lyrics.
Amanda is famed for her deep contralto vocals and distinctive half-sung, half-spoken style. She has sung in English, German, Italian, and Lusitan, all with a deliberately thick accent. She named Marlene Dietrich as one of her biggest influences, and Marisa Ibáñez Flores describes her vocals as "simply an exaggeration of Marlene's whiskey-voiced sultriness".
Public image
Amanda's career has been defined by her deliberately cultivated image as a scandalous sex symbol. From the beginning, she emphasised her intersex status and mysterious background, creating a reputation as decadent and exotic. She maintains a thick accent regardless of what language she sings or speaks in, concealing which is her native language.
Nora Gunnarsen writes that "there is something enticingly ravenous" about Amanda's sex appeal, alluding to her surname "Leloup" ("the wolf"). Indeed, Amanda's image has been predominantly that of the thick-voiced temptress and seductress, with songs like "I Am a Photograph", "Follow Me", and "I'm a Mistery" presenting her as something akin to a transformative, wickedly enticing force. Her pornography work similarly positioned her in the active and aggressive role.
Francité also forms a notable component of her public image, which she has drawn on for a veneer of elegance that accentuates her "wicked", mischievous aspects. Esua Nadel referenced this when she praised Amanda's ability to "smile innocently and have something scandalous lurk behind that smile".
Cultual commentator Hanako Fukui finds "enjoyable sleuthing" to be significant for Amanda's enduring popularity. Her consistency about only telling the truth about her sex gives "gains an oddly admirable integrity", and her flamboyant approach enabled her life's story to pass from simple exaggeration into "a self-made legend". L'Petit Écho similarly wrote that "to ponder Amanda's life is the equivalent of willingly accepting a challenge to enter a house of mirrors", and described her as "a sterling example of modern mythmaking".
Amanda has both exploited her mythology in her career and sent up her image, poking fun at her love of fame through lyrics like "I Want My Name on a Billboard", and sometimes accepting roles as mysterious strangers that provide cryptic clues. She is a participant in the Social Partnership Program, with her historical net worth peaking at some Ŧ100 million in the early 1980s.
Private life
She was married twice, in 1965 to an architecture student, and in 1977 to a nightclub promoter and manager. The first marriage ended in unknown circumstances, and the second lasted until her husband's death in 2000. She has no children.
She is a practitioner of Concordianism, and a member of OMFLG and ACFEN.
In a 2009 interview with bavarde, she humorously reflected on her current lifestyle:
"I'm more of a morning girl, I must say. The first thing — breakfast, cornflakes, muesli, coffee…I'm very healthy, I take vitamins, ginseng… I'm a working girl and I go to bed early. I'm not much of a disco girl anymore, I'm not going out to clubs. Whenever I started doing something, people expected me to fail somehow—'She can't dance, sing, paint, act, let's go have a good laugh.' So I insisted on being terribly professional about it, no matter what I did. And everyone was surprised."
Legacy
Amanda is an iconic figure in Gylian pop culture, recognised for her diverse career and a leading example of colourful participation in Gylian politics, mainly owing to her tenure as Governor of Nezyál and her repeated runs for the presidency.
As one of Gylias' prominent French public figures, she has been both a representative of and an influence on francité, with her decadent image fitting in the mold established by Cécile Sorel. Amanda has been strongly supportive of francité throughout her career, and has collaborated at various points with most of Gylias' major French artists, including Annemarie Beaulieu, Émilie Simon, Louise Bourgoin, and Élise Dubois. Louise Bourgoin named Amanda as a great influence on her acting in Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec.
Amanda was one of the first intersex Gylians to achieve national fame, thus giving her a groundbreaking role in promoting intersex rights and representation. She made being intersex central to her status as a sex symbol, using it to bolster her air of mystery without objectifying it. Several of her defining songs, such as "Beauty Queen", "The Bogus Man", and "Follow Me", implicitly drew on her sex ambiguity to present "irresistible invitations to opulent decadence".
Her prolific self-mythologising has given rise to "a small cottage industry" of biographies and documentaries; among the latter, I Want My Name on a Billboard (2019) is considered definitive. Her last words in that documentary were: "Some people go into years and years of psychiatry because they want to understand…You know what? I don't want to know how it works inside. I want to remain an enigma."