Growing up in
Belgium, Stromae was a big rap fan. “Hip-hop was like school
when I was between the ages of 16 and 21,” he said recently. “People like G.
Dep, Black Rob, and Notorious B.I.G. were my models.”
اضافة اعلان
But it was the homegrown electro combo Technotronic
— yes, they were Belgian — that suggested he might be able to get somewhere as
a musician. “For me, ‘Pump Up the Jam’ is a classic,” Stromae said, before
accurately reeling off the 1989 song’s Billboard position: No. 2 on the Hot 100
chart. “There’s something Belgian in me, maybe cynicism or irony or
surrealism,” he added. “We’re always a little average — we try to do our best,
but ….”
Stromae, speaking via video chat from a comfortable
couch in his Brussels studio, trailed off, chuckling. The context provided the
punchline: Over the past decade, the 36-year-old songwriter, performer, and
designer, whose gangly silhouette and precise elegance evoke a friendly Buster
Keaton, has become a global star with music that blends those early influences:
the poetic urgency of hip-hop and the dancey allure of electronic music.
In 2015, this son of a Belgian-Flemish mother and
Rwandan father became the first Francophone performer singing in French to headline
Madison Square Garden in
New York City; that same year, Kanye West joined him
onstage at Coachella in California. But as Stromae’s success, lifted by
earworms carrying serious messages such as “Alors On Danse” and “Papaoutai,”
seemed poised to reach another level, he took a break between albums that
stretched to nine years.
During that time, his reputation only grew. “He’s
mixing this Belgian singer-songwriter tradition, rhythms from all over the
place, EDM — I don’t know where to start, really,” said Chris Martin of
Coldplay, which featured Stromae on its 2019 track “Arabesque.” “It’s as if
he’s downloaded the entire history of music into his brain and then sings what
comes out. Everything he does has something that makes your synapses fire.”
Now Stromae — born Paul Van Haver (his stage name is
an inversion of Maestro) — is back Friday with “Multitude,” his third album and
the first since his 2013 breakout, “Racine Carrée.” Return trips are scheduled
to Coachella on April 16 and 23 and the Garden on November 21.
The pause between releases was partly related to
severe
health problems Stromae endured in the mid-2010s. He suffered for years
after an anti-malarial treatment set off a chain reaction of physical and
mental ailments — which went as far and deep as suicidal thoughts. He broaches
that subject in the new track “L’Enfer” (“Hell”), which he sang in a striking
live performance on the French evening news in January. The song’s confessional
tone and unadorned presentation felt like a departure from his usual flair for
high concepts and singing in character.
“I still love telling stories, but I found that the
best way to tell this particular one was to use ‘I,’” he said plainly. “That
felt obvious.”
In conversation, Stromae made clear there were other
reasons for the new record’s lengthy gestation.
One was the burnout that so often follows years of
intense touring. Although he did not release songs of his own for nearly a
decade, he kept busy. He married his girlfriend,
Coralie Barbier, and they had
a son. He focused on Mosaert (another anagram), the design studio he runs with
his two closest collaborators — his brother, Luc Junior Tam, and Barbier.
Together they worked on their own unisex fashion “capsules,” as they call them,
and on videos for Dua Lipa’s “IDGAF” and Billie Eilish’s “Hostage.”
The pandemic also played a role. Although he was
able to still go to his studio and compose music, Stromae said he could not
come up with lyrics without the happenstance encounters, the minutiae of daily
life that inspire him.
His slump eventually ended, and he passed a theme —
folklore — on to his collaborators, including 29-year-old London-based Moon
Willis, who has composing, producing, and performing credits on several of the
new songs.
“Originally, all I got was ‘Paul’s starting a new
album, the theme is folkloric music,’” Willis said over the phone with a laugh.
“Over time, it became clearer.”
A major element was traditional musical styles and
instruments from all over the world: an Andean guitarlike charango, a Middle
Eastern flute called a ney. When mentioning his interest in using the erhu, for
example, Stromae said, “It’s a kind of Chinese fiddle that you hear a lot in
‘
Kung Fu Panda.’ Those are all points of reference to me, a little vulgar, a
little basic — it’s my vision of world music coming from my hometown of
Brussels.”
This translated to the movement accompanying the
sounds, too.
Choreographer Marion Motin, who worked on Stromae’s tours for
“
Racine Carrée” and “Multitude,” as well as on some of his videos, recalled his
directive for a performance of “Santé” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy
Fallon” in December. “He said he wanted something like the folk dances you
would see in weddings, so I built from that,” she said in a phone interview.
Stromae said he was trying to communicate warmth:
“You hold each other and you have fun, it’s like dancing around a campfire.”
Although Stromae loves elaborate concepts — Belgium,
after all, was also the country of the surrealist artist René Magritte, and the
musician has deployed the Magritte-esque disclaimer “This is not a …” on some
of his videos — they never undermine the sincerity of his approach.
Through both his visuals and his music, the messages
translate across the globe, because “You feel the meaning even if you don’t
understand the words,” Motin said.
Stromae, as usual, had a humble explanation.
“I think it’s because we
do things in the right order: We create the songs and then we come up with ways
to stage them, not the reverse,” he said. “The main goal is to create good
songs. That’s my primary job.”
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