Bono, Michael Stipe and Pharrell Williams are among the stars to have contributed to an album about an artist’s dead cat.
Sophie Calle has compiled a 37-track record which has been named ‘Souris Calle’ in honour of the late feline and attracted a string of guests to appear on the LP, including The National, Jarvis Cocker and Laurie Anderson.
The album opens with a voicemail tribute from Bono, who speaks over a rock beat and says: "She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her/ So that like an audience she can look them over/ Menacing and sullen, curls asleep with them/ Then all at once, as if awakened/ She turns her face to yours/ And with a shock you see yourself/ Tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs."
Sophie announced plans for the record in June and debuted the project at Paris’ Perrotin gallery earlier this month, with the exhibition also including photographs and autobiographical texts written by the French artist about the deaths of her cat, as well as close family and friends.
She previously admitted people have dismissed her mourning of her furry friend as "ridiculous", even though she had a stronger bond with Souris – which translates to Mouse in English – than her immediate family.
She told Artnet: "When you say you’re sad about the cat, it’s a bit obscene for people. You can’t say that.
"I mean, if I say my mother or my father is dead, everyone tells me ‘Oh, poor thing, she lost her mother, oh, poor thing, she lost her father,’ but if we say that about our cat, we seem ridiculous.
"It makes me laugh, when for me, in my daily life, it was almost more violent, because I lived with my cat. I didn’t live with my parents."
Bono, Michael Stipe feature on dead cat record
