NSG’s David Lancaster caught up with South Africa’s power punk princesses, The SoapGirls, to talk about raising money for sick newborns, walking away from lucrative record deals, and almost getting strangled by a snake!

The SoapGirls are french born sisters, Noemie (Mie) & Camille (Millie) Debray who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa.

They acquired their name from tourists after raising money for charity, selling handmade soaps while singing and street performing at their local harbour and waterfront.

Soon the girls were offered a record deal and after initially signing to Universal and having big success nationally, including a number 1 album, the band went their own way, taking their unique brand of D.I.Y. power punk across the globe, since then releasing 3 very successful albums, with a 4th on its way.

DL: Hi guys, how’s life been out in SA, how have you handled the lockdowns? You’ve had a booze ban out there too I hear??

N: During this whole pandemic or “Plandemic” as we like to call it, we have been so lucky to have Sam with us, she’s an amazing manager. She foresaw everything that was gonna happen and she told us to build a stage in our garage where we live.

C: What happened initially in SA was that the lockdown started in March 2020 and they shut down almost every shop, apart from ones that sold essentials, so you couldn’t buy clothes or certain cleaning products, you really couldn’t buy much at all and the military were out checking what we were doing and where we were going, making sure that we had a good reason to go to the shops and that we were only buying those essential items.

N: We were being very controlled.

C: So Sam, our manager got us some old crates and got us all to build a stage. We soon got to work, hammering away. 

N: We actually have a really cool fan base, more like an online community and that helped us a lot and we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do these live shows and we’ve been doing them since April last year, and we haven’t stopped, 4 shows a week. 

C: We really love it, we use paints and we have different themes and different ideas for each show.

N: Obviously we miss being on tour as we would be travelling to different places and it would be eight months touring different countries usually.

C: We definitely miss that and we miss the energy of the audience at a live show, but still being able to do what we love doing, however weird the circumstances are, it means everything to us.

N: It’s amazing that we get messages from people saying things like. “You have no idea how much your shows help me.” I think people feel like there isn’t anything going on right now, and people feel a bit hopeless, so for us hearing that, it’s like, “Wow !!!” 

C: A few people said they were literally about to end their lives and somehow they came across our live stream and said that they couldn’t stop laughing and they were surprised to be laughing and then they get into it and got through their troubles and they sent us messages thanking us. I think they were just happy to feel connected to something, and that’s the biggest problem with the pandemic, people feeling so closed off from each other.

N: You can chat to friends online but it’s not the same. We are really lucky to have our fans.

C: Our fans feel part of everything we do like if they see us writing a song, or if we start jamming a song, they see the song progress and then we go and record it but our fans feel like they’ve known that song since it’s inception, so they feel part of it, which is cool. With regards to the alcohol and tobacco ban, there was huge black market trading and the crazy bit was that one government official’s son owned the only brand of cigarettes available, so he was thriving, and he was making millions. People were making moonshine too, Sam tried making some for me and it smelt like death, so I wasn’t that desperate to drink it. She actually bought surgical spirit, and I was like “Sam, I’m a bit crazy but I’m not that crazy.” Now I can buy alcohol again, it’s still restricted though and you can only buy it on certain days and certain hours.

N: We still can’t fly out anywhere, flying still isn’t allowed and there is a curfew too.  We have these neighbours across the road from us, and most of our neighbours are cool as we give them weed or we give them guitars for their kids to play on, but this one couple just don’t like us and they actually called the cops during one of our live streams, and we can’t afford the cops coming here and confiscating our stuff, so we have to be really careful now, looking out for cars. If we see a car, it probably is the police during the curfew hours, so we have to stop the live streams. So lockdown here has been pretty interesting.

Noemie and Camille Debray (The SoapGirls)

DL: I see you’ve been keeping well busy with that “Virtual Worldwide Tour” travelling around the world, (from your garage via YouTube).4 shows each week, how many have there been in total, it must be hundreds now?. Also, you’ve started on a new album too??

N: Yes, four shows a week, Monday is always acoustic.

C: Even before lockdown, for many years we’ve always done ‘Live Acoustic Monday‘, now the three themed shows have been added.

N: We are excited to be recording and finishing the 4th album.

C: We started recording it after the tour when we got home, December 2019.

N: That was during the rolling blackouts, which we still have here, we have power outages, so it makes recording really difficult.

C: Then the pandemic hit, so around March time we just had to stop.

N: It’s so expensive, they’d still charge us for full studio time, even though we could only record for four hours or something.

C: We went in recently and we did a few more songs and we have a few more to go and then we’re done with this album. Also, to pay for the record, we had so many weed plants growing at our house, (we don’t anymore, but back then we did), we had a fuck load of weed and that’s how we funded the recording of the album, growing and selling weed. There was so much of it, it was literally like a jungle, the whole garden. Our cat loved it.

DL: You just released a new single, “Heart in Bloom,” as a teaser for the next album, nice song btw, and amazing video, incredible footage of the Cape, who shot that? I think it’s your best promo to date.

C: Thank you so much, Sam shot it. We broke into a nightclub, it used to be a really happening place and then it got into a mess coz of lockdown, rats living in there, and stuff, and cockroaches had taken it over. After that, we shot some bits on the beach and then on Chapman’s Peak which is a famous road in Cape Town.

N: We stole a chandelier from that nightclub too.

DL: So, let’s go back to when you were just 8 and 9 years of age, tell us how it all started for you guys out on the beach at Hout Bay? You became celebs amongst the tourists and you became street performers and a local attraction, but I hear, to begin with, you were selling fudge, were you almost The FudgeGirls?? 

N: Ha, we never sold fudge, we just ate fudge.

C: We’ve always been aware of people around us, you can’t grow up in SA without understanding that a lot of people are suffering. We were never super well off ourselves, there were times where we’ve been through absolute hunger and we had nothing, so we know what it feels like, and we were raised to always be aware and keep our eyes open. If you see someone suffering, not to turn a blind eye, no matter what, you can always help out. So we’ve always been socially aware and we have a huge social conscience.

N: Our mum always told us about the townships and made us understand how people live there and why people are angry or violent, so she always gave us a big understanding about life and people, and taught us to never be selfish.

C: When we were at school I remember a lot of news reports about the war in Iraq and seeing kids there being displaced, having their homes bombed and we were feeling terrible and we just wanted to do something.

N:  That’s when our mum said that it was really sweet of us to feel that way and to want to help but she reminded us that in our own backyard there were a lot of kids needing help too.

C: We always wanted to be like girl scouts or something, so we were like, yes, we can be the girl scouts in South Africa.

N: At that time our mum was making soaps, so we asked if we could take a few of her soaps and go door to door and sell them and see if we could raise some funds…

C: Initially we wanted to raise funds for nuns, to take care of kids in children’s homes, orphans and kids with HIV. So we started raising money for them and we helped them out, then we saw other news in the papers about hospitals having severe lack of funding and there were babies being born, weighing little more than a brick of butter and they were using incubators from the 1970s to try and keep them alive. They were also using ‘Kangaroo care,’ where people just volunteer to go and hold babies to keep them warm.

N: It’s pretty fucked up and most of the babies wouldn’t make it, it’s sad in this day and age.

C: So we decided to keep selling the soap and buy a humidifier for 15,000 Rand and people told us we were nuts, we would never be able to raise that amount of money, so we were like “well, you’ll see.” Initially, we went knocking on doors but our mum didn’t like it as it wasn’t safe, so as we were living just up the road from the harbour, we’d just go and skip up to people and start singing to them. We’d speak in sync and be funny and we just never stopped, we’d get on the tourist buses and stuff.

N: We’d sing in different languages, dance, and just entertain them.

C: We didn’t want to just demand money off people, we wanted to entertain them, so they were happy to part with their cash. We bought the humidifier, then we decided to buy an incubator, and we did other stuff too like buying running shoes for athletes who couldn’t afford to wear shoes in their races and stuff.

N: South Africa is a very strange country, if you’re 2 little white blonde girls and you are busking and street performing for charity, people will look down on you, and you are seen as an embarrassment, so we took a lot of shit at school, from kids, parents, and from teachers, but I think that set us up for the future and gave us a thick skin to just pursue our dreams no matter what. If you’re determined and you have a goal then you can get it.

C: Our names are up on the donor boards in the hospital amongst big corporate companies who donate money, then there’s us, two little kids, right next to them. We never gave up, it was something that made us passionate and it made us happy, we’d also visit the kids in the hospital.

N: From doing all that we met a guy who had a studio and he asked us if we’d like to visit and try out some recording.

C: We’d always loved street entertainment and singing so he asked if we’d like to try singing in a recording booth and see how it sounded.

Noemie and Camille Debray (The SoapGirls)

DL: All credit to you. Can I say that that’s such an amazing achievement for two young people, your mum must have been so proud of you, all credit to her too. 

N: We were out there 365 days a year, even when it was raining, we never gave up.

DL: So after visiting that recording studio, eventually, you are offered a record deal, still in your teens you record a couple of singles. Aged just 14 and 15, you sign to Universal and record your 1st album, a dance/pop record that was number 1 in SA. You had a handful of singles that got radio and TV play, however, you hated this period and you managed to get out of that deal with Universal. This was so brave of you guys .. what happened and why have you “dis-owned” that album?

C: It wasn’t through raising money for the hospitals or going on TV that we got signed, it was actually a good while until we got signed, we were going from studio to studio to studio.

N: We even had an album, we actually did 3 albums, 2 of them never got released, 1 eventually being that album that got released by the label.

C: It was a real journey and when we did get signed we’d already been doing music for a long time. Initially, we thought getting signed would be the best thing on earth.

N: ..but we didn’t realise what it actually meant.

C: All we wanted was funding to pay for recording and to do videos and stuff like that, that’s what we wanted from the label, and to tour and stuff, that’s what we really wanted.

N: It can be great if you find the right label but this one just wasn’t right for us.

C: They had a very different idea about what they wanted from us, they wanted us to be South Africa’s version of Lady GaGa, which is cool, but that’s not us, and you don’t take something that’s going on overseas and try to replicate it here. What the fuck!  So, we struggled and there was so much drama behind the scenes, aggressive producers, drug taking on their part, and just really really bad shit. It was hard, every time we had a creative idea or we had an idea on how we wanted to dress it wasn’t allowed. Even us being honest in an interview, that was a big no-no.

N: It’s pretty fucked up how they do it when you’re young, it can really fuck with your self confidence. I’d think “Oh shit, we really need these people”, but in reality, no, you don’t fucking need them.

C: It took us four years to get out of that contract, we had to piss off the MD, what happened then was that we ended up blacklisted in the SA music industry, and at the time we were illegal immigrants, even though we grew up in South Africa we didn’t have SA citizenship, so it was very scary.

N: The record label just didn’t take care for us, they didn’t give a shit, we were starving when we were signed to that label, they’d send us to red carpet events and they’d give us clothes to wear and then take the clothes back from us afterward and we’d go home starving.

C: We couldn’t do the shows that we wanted to do, they had to approve everything, and we aren’t fake people, so if shit is going down, we will always say something.

N: In radio interviews, we would be very honest then getting called in for a meeting. Sometimes they would even stand next to us telling us what to say. But you’re just supposed to smile and act like everything is great.

C: They saw we were getting a lot of support from the gay community in South Africa and they didn’t like that at all, they were like “That’s a great market, but don’t overstep the line too much, as you still have to be family friendly,” and we were like “excuse me?” They weren’t happy with us leading marches for gay rights and weren’t happy with us supporting gay marriage, saying we shouldn’t affiliate ourselves with that community. It’s weird, and it took many years getting out and we worked our butts off, it was really difficult going from having our music on the radio to no one wanting to touch us and it was horrible not being able to record in anyone’s studio.

N: So we just wanted to get over to the U.K or somewhere. 

C: It took us ages, we started waitressing, working double shifts and we saved up and went to America first, taking all the songs that we had been writing. All the songs that the label didn’t want, the stuff they thought wasn’t radio friendly.  So everything was cool in America and we were in this studio where Blondie had recorded in New York, but then when we heard our music played back, it still sounded similar to the music we’d recorded back home, it still sounded like dance pop. 

Camille Debray (The SoapGirls)

DL: Fun question, how many “4 letter acronyms” can you make from the SOAPgirls name?.. I heard something like, SEXY OUTRAGEOUS AND PINK once, I have, SAFFERS ON ACID PUNK. What else could we have??

C: Sniff Out All Panties,

N: Sniff Out All Politicians, 

C: Spit On All Paedos, 

N & C: Strangest of All People.

DL: After a short time in New York you return home and record your first “real” SoapGirls record, picking up your instruments now for ‘Calls For Rebellion.’ Now you have your own sound, “Power-Punk” or “Revolt-Rock” … 2 tracks on there really stand out live for me, ‘Black Mass‘ and ‘Real‘, Can you tell us a bit about those songs? 

C: So we returned from America, we actually turned down a very big deal, a major major deal worth a lot of money, and people told us we were stupid as we were starving at the time, but we felt it was just gonna be the same thing as before.

N: Golden hand-cuffs.

C: It’s not good if you don’t believe in what you’re doing at the end of the day. The music we recorded out there sounds kinda cool and maybe one day we will release it, but I wouldn’t want that stuff to define me.

N: There’s nothing wrong with dance music and we’ve mixed some of our music into EDM, but it was everything that we had just left.

C: So yer, we came back to South Africa and we worked none stop, we kept uploading onto YouTube and just kept on working. Through that, we connected to someone who asked us to tour in the U.K., and we’d heard that so many times, people promising us the world, but eventually it did happen and it was time for us to go and we didn’t have an album, even though we had some music. We were like, “Oh fuck, we can’t tour with nothing, we need an album.”So the week before we left we found a studio and in 2 days we recorded ‘Calls For Rebellion.

N: We found a session drummer who listened to our stuff and had to record on the day.

C: I love it though, that album has some of my favourite tracks that we’ve ever written on it.

N: ‘Black Mass,’ we wrote because South Africa is a beautiful country, but it’s also very turbulent and volatile. At that time there were a lot of xenophobic attacks happening which was shocking and terrible to see, African people were killing and harming other Africans because they were scared of people taking their jobs and stuff, which just wasn’t true.

C: Just pure evil, so ‘Black Mass‘ is like the inverse of a catholic mass. We saw footage of people taking a mum from Zimbabwe and putting a tire over her and setting it alight, and it makes me feel sick, I’ve even got goosebumps now talking about it, but that’s what that song is about. ‘Real‘ is about people being fake, it took us nearly a year to finish that song, we just kept coming back to it, one of the only songs that we never got finished right away. It’s one of my favourites to perform live. It’s really a song about having the strength to survive anything.

Noemie Debray (The SoapGirls)

DL: What’s your favourite country or city to play in? You’ve played some amazing shows and big festivals such as Rebellion and Camden Rocks, what’s the funniest story you can tell us about, what’s the craziest tour story??

C: It’s a tie between the U.K. and Germany, there’s so many places that we love so it’s difficult to choose. The people in Italy are wild, so much fun.  France, we absolutely love it and it’s so much fun speaking in our mother tongue. 

N: Then there’s the British sense of humour, that’s hilarious.

C: Germany has such a culture of music, we love it. Favourite city is maybe impossible to answer.

N: Each place is different and even if it’s a shitty experience then it’s still hilarious, and it still means something.

C: I like being in London and I really love the Camden Rocks festival. One of the craziest things that happened was us having to play this show in Mannheim, Germany.  We had to get to Manchester, England afterwards, with just 16 hours to spare. So, we played the show, but then outside there was this mad festival going on.

N: Everything you could think of was in our way, the whole town was in the streets and this little Turkish guy helped us with our merch, he packed this big merch box for us and he was driving ahead of us, out in front, beeping cars and ramming people out of the way, people were climbing on our van and stuff.

C: That was 2 a.m. and we needed to get to Calais to catch the ferry to get to Manchester.

N: Then we had to drive from Dover to Manchester.

C: By the time we got on stage we hadn’t stopped and we almost missed that ferry, which woulda been a major fuck up. We just arrived at the venue, no soundcheck, we just got up and played.

N: At Camden Rocks festival our van broke down, it was fine all over Europe, then when we got to the U.K. it packed up. I think we were in Cambridge on this really bad bend in the road. We didn’t know who to call and all our phones were dead as we couldn’t charge them and we had to push the van into a Tesco car park, then these sketchy looking people turned up, who looked like they wanted to rob our van. We just had to stay there all night waiting for help.

C: The next day we found this repair shop garage place where this really sweet polish guy fixed our van and again, we just about made it by the skin of our teeth to Camden. That journey, I actually had to shit in the van while it was moving. There was no time for a toilet stop. No sleeping, no toilets, just get to the stage…get on and play. That van needs therapy, it’s seen a lot of stuff.

DL: 2017 and things really start moving for you guys, becoming established on the live circuit internationally with the album ‘Society’s Rejects‘, some great SoapGirls songs came from that period, ‘Johnny Rotten‘ and ‘Bad Bitch‘ to name just a couple. My favourite is ‘Original Sin‘, Can you tell me about that song Millie?

C: I love performing that song live, again, it’s metaphorical. “Take a bite of my apple..” you know the whole concept of Adam and Eve? basically when you know the truth and you start questioning things then you’re an outsider, but you can put your own spin to it. Just be yourself on this earth and accept what comes with it. 

N: According to the bible we’re all born sinners anyway, so fuck it.

Noemie Debray (The SoapGirls)

DL: So, the band progressed steadily, gaining a huge global audience amassing over 90,000 followers across social media, and in 2019 you gift us the mammoth ‘Elephant In The Room.’  This brings back so many good memories for me and I feel your songwriting went through the roof on this double album. At this point, I’d like to tell our readers that you write, arrange and produce all your own music, also playing all the instruments on your recordings (except for drums), with your manager Sam being responsible for the design work for your sleeves and merch. It’s impressive to produce such high level work consistently all by yourselves if you don’t mind me saying. Highlights from ‘Elephant in The Room‘ were ‘White Flag‘, “Chains” and ‘One Way Street“..Mie, can you tell us about ‘One Way Street?”..also, what went on with the “Chains” video, did that snake really shit on you, Millie??

N: ‘One Way Street‘ was written about a relationship that is just at a dead end, not going anywhere. Any kind of relationship could be a friendship too. Sometimes people have taken all they can from you and then they keep coming back. With the ‘Chains‘ video, we’d played at this really cool venue in Italy, the Krach Club. The owner ‘Silvo’ is a lovely guy and the venue looks really retro, nice stage with a nice energy there and we thought it would be great to film our video at his theatre. So he invited us back the next morning.

C: We finished that gig at 3 a.m. than at 5 a.m. we went back there to shoot.

N: It was so funny because we were so tired. We had to go through the song and really perform it like a million times and our next gig was only six hours away. We had to drive to the next show covered in this paint from the video and when we arrived it was like a jazz club, everyone sitting down and we walked in covered in black and red paint, all these Italian people were staring at us, but they were really cool.

C: In Italy, no matter how late you are, they insist on feeding you before the gig, so we had this three course meal and we were so full on the stage.

N: That lady’s cooking was so good.

C: The snake is called Tara, she belongs to the venue owner, she didn’t shit on any of us, but it did start strangling Noemie, but I don’t mind snakes, they’re one of my favourite animals.

DL: You guys are so close, with some people actually thinking you are twins. It’s amazing sometimes seeing how close you both are like you finish each other’s sentences and stuff. As a pair, you reveal so much of yourselves to your fans, you kind of share your lives with us. What do you do in your downtime? Also, Mie, tell us something about Millie that she’d hate us knowing about? Millie, tell us something about Mie that no one would know of? Who snores and who has the smelliest feet??

N: We are opposites but not the same, very similar but different. We both like the beach and we like reading.

C: I love mushrooms and psychedelic trips, I don’t have to leave my house for that. We both like to learn new things, anything creative, drawing, making clothes, yoga too. I also love volunteering, anything that’s good for the soul or the mind, we love that type of stuff.

N: Something about her that no one else knows.. well, I’m not that brave am I? haha..she likes collecting handbags and she’s actually really girly, most people don’t think that but she is VERY girly. She also collects Bratz dolls. When our little cousins come over, if our mum gives them a doll to play with then she’s watching them hawk-eyed, not wanting them to leave with one of her dolls.

C: My sister is very competitive and she’s very sporty, really good at long distance running. She’s brilliant, naturally athletic. 

N: Oh, here’s something not many people would know about me, I really love Ice skating. I used to ice skate up to the age of about 13.

C: Neither of us snore.

N: The only time I ever do is if I’m sick if I have a sore throat or blocked nose.

C: You do talk in your sleep though. She speaks weird languages.

N: Two years ago on tour, I had really bad pain in my feet and knees and I was making “old granny” dying sounds in my sleep, and Camille was like, “Shut the fuck up!”

C: Sometimes on tour, I can sleep with my eyes open and she takes photos of me.

N: We don’t have smelly feet, although our tour boots stink.

C: Yer, we do 150 shows or more on a tour and we sweat a fuck load and there’s no time to air the boots, so they go dripping wet into a suitcase.

N: Then when you open the case it smells like a wet dog. Some people try to help us with our cases into the venues and you can see their faces thinking “WTF is this ?”

Camille Debray (The SoapGirls)

DL: Right, you two actually get an extra question. What’s next for you guys? Will you manage to get back to Europe this year? Is visiting the USA and Japan still on the cards and will the new album be out in 2021, does it have a name yet?? 

C: We will be finishing the album later this year, we just need a couple more songs.

N: Some ideas for names..we have ‘Medicated Bubblebath’ but that’s the name of one of the songs too.

C: I like that as an album title, but there are some other song titles that we could use, so it might be a surprise and we might just make up a whole different name yet.

N: As far as touring goes we are definitely planning on touring this year, but we are waiting to see how things play out.

C: We have dates booked for Germany in October but we have to wait, and we’re very grateful to have people supporting us through the live streams, that’s helped us so much with saving for the tour. As soon as we can, we will go. We have something booked for Japan but the USA might be tricky this year, we’re keeping our fingers crossed though. Going to America will be insane, we can’t wait.

N: Even getting back to the U.K. now will be difficult, it’s become so strict and it’s so expensive now, so it’s all about saving up.

C: Yer, we have to wait, we wouldn’t want to fly over then not be allowed to do shows, but as soon as possible we will be there. Through the live streams, we have connected to so many people in different countries and we are so grateful for that.

DL: Once again thank you for giving us the chance to interview you, anything else you’d like to add?

C: Just that people need to stand united now that there is so much shit in this world. Obviously, you can’t ignore what’s going on and we should all speak out openly against pedophiles, against animal abusers, against the politicians who are screwing us over. Those people need to be held to account and more than ever we need more love and acceptance in the world. Start spreading happiness, I understand how people are stressed, but there is so much hatred. Fuck all the segregation and all the politics that divide us, we need to come together.

N: That’s the cool thing about music, you can get someone from a completely opposite standpoint politically and you can put a song on that they both like and they’ll both start dancing, that’s the beauty of music.

C: People need to find common ground and stop allowing politics to infect the world with shit, that’s what’s keeping us from progressing, it’s just bullshit. We should all stand for equality, equality should be for all, no matter what your gender, colour, or anything else. We should all be fighting for that goal.

Noemie and Camille Debray (The SoapGirls)

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