Catherine Ringer Was the Kind of Creative Force Pop Needs More Of
Catherine Ringer, the unmistakable voice and co-founder of French pop-rock duo Les Rita Mitsouko, has died at 68. Her family announced that she died during the night of September 14, 2026, after a fast-moving cancer.
The report below is in French; English captions are available through YouTube’s caption settings.
Such a great creative force. Ringer never felt designed by committee, never sounded like somebody trying to fit neatly into a movement and never seemed particularly interested in making herself easier to categorize. That freedom was the whole point.
With guitarist and creative partner Fred Chichin, whom she met at the end of the 1970s, Ringer built Les Rita Mitsouko into one of the most singular acts to come out of France in the 1980s. They pulled from new wave, rock, funk, chanson, dance music, theater and pure visual eccentricity without ever sounding like a collage of influences. Somehow, it all became theirs.
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The breakthrough was “Marcia Baïla”, released in 1984 and written for Argentine dancer and choreographer Marcia Moretto after her death. The song became enormous in France, but what still makes it hit is how little it behaves like a conventional pop breakthrough: theatrical vocals, angular movement, color everywhere and grief sitting right inside the groove.
Then came songs including “Andy,” “C’est comme ça” and “Les Histoires d’A,” with albums such as The No Comprendo pushing the duo further into that beautifully unruly space between pop, punk, rock and art-school experimentation.
INA Looks Back at Catherine Ringer in a Newly Uploaded Tribute
France’s Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) has newly uploaded this retrospective in tribute to Ringer, looking back across her singular life, voice and work with Les Rita Mitsouko.
Ringer was a singer, of course, but calling her only a singer always felt too small. She came through theater and dance, understood clothes and movement as part of performance, could turn her voice from sly to explosive in seconds and carried the kind of visual instinct that made a song feel bigger than its recording. She was an artist in the fullest sense of the word.
After Chichin died in 2007, Ringer kept moving. She continued performing the music they made together and built a solo career of her own, including 2011’s Ring n’ Roll. But she never treated Les Rita Mitsouko like a museum piece. The music stayed alive because she did.
That is also what makes the news feel especially sudden. Ringer was still actively working in 2026, performing in Paris earlier this year and expected to continue bringing the music she created with Chichin back to the stage. Her family’s description of a fast-moving cancer only sharpens the sense that a creative life still very much in motion was interrupted with almost no warning.
That is part of why this one hits at INYIM. We feature Les Rita Mitsouko on INYIM Radio because the records still sound alive — weird in the best way, stylish without becoming frozen in an era, melodic without sanding away the edges. They are exactly the kind of songs that remind you pop can be strange, dramatic, funny, beautiful and completely itself.
Catherine Ringer had a voice you knew immediately, but it was the mind behind it that made the whole thing matter. She and Chichin helped make French pop feel wider, freer and less obedient. Generations later, the fingerprints are still everywhere.
Rest easy, Catherine. Thank you for the color, the nerve, the movement and all that glorious creative freedom.
Sparks Remember Catherine Ringer
Sparks also shared their own reaction to Ringer’s death, a particularly meaningful tribute given their long creative connection with Les Rita Mitsouko.
“Catherine. There was no one like her. A true force of nature. It was a gift to have worked with her (and Fred) and it was an even greater gift to call her a friend. Catherine was truly special and France will not be the same without her.
Artiste incomparable, amie incomparable. Catherine, tu nous manqueras.
Bisous de tes amis Russell et Ron.”
Sparks — Russell and Ron Mael
Sparks & Catherine Ringer Reunite for “Singing in the Shower”
A more recent reunion with Sparks finds Catherine Ringer revisiting “Singing in the Shower,” the wonderfully oddball Les Rita Mitsouko/Sparks collaboration, during the Mael brothers’ Château d’Hérouville session.
Source: Catherine Ringer’s family via AFP; France’s Ministry of Culture; Euronews; INA; RTBF Archives; ARTE.
