Stromae still a master of directing! What a sense and what a science of surprise and emotion that we did not see coming. This Sunday evening, following seven years of absence, and two months before the release of her album “Multitude” on March 4, followed by a tour, Stromae gave her first interview for years to Anne-Claire Coudray, at the newspaper of 20 hours of TF 1.
Quite demure and beautifully youthful at 36, in a classic dark suit and tie over a light shirt, the whimsy of the vests of yesteryear having moved into a ponytail. But while the interview purred a little, everything suddenly shifted to a kind of magic as in each of his appearances: when the journalist asked him a question regarding his state of health and his depressive phases at the end of his last tour in 2015, the Belgian artist, without moving, without warning, without batting an eyelash, well seated in his seat, replied… In song.
It was expected, because the music was there, but what timing: Stromae confesses much more effectively while singing than speaking. As if he were simply answering the question, he chained his verses and his poignant refrain: “Suddenly I sometimes had suicidal thoughts and I’m not proud of it / We sometimes believe that this is the only way to silence them. “The title is called” Hell “and in this moment of pure musical comedy, almost cinema, this way of singing without leaving the table, Paul Van Haver has said everything regarding the torments.
A real TV moment. We expected it, we ended up doubting it. Stromae wasn’t going to give an interview like everyone else? At the beginning, it was. Yes, the urge had “returned”. Her marriage, her 3-year-old child, but not fully fledged, the touring life which had sometimes been “not very interesting”, the need to work for other artists, from Bigflo & Oli to Orelsan “to bring down pressure ”, of the enormous success of his first two albums“ So we dance ”and“ Square root ”and his five years of continuous frenzy before a burn-out and an illness linked to a drug taken during his tour, completed in Rwanda, the country of his absent father, of the unforgettable “Papaoutai”.
It is of his mother that he spoke, “she made us travel in a backpack, to Mali, to Mexico, everywhere”, he who wanted his new album “Multitude” to cultivate these “grooves” of the world. whole. But this last question, this silence, this song, “Hell” will remain. A new single, following “Health”, which was immediately posted on the platforms. Hell and the return of paradise.
