That moment when Eddy de Pretto knew there would be a second album -
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Each week,
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invites a personality to comment on a social phenomenon in their “
20 Minutes
with…” meeting.
This Friday, the day of release of his second album,
To all the bastards
, Eddy de Pretto evokes the visibility of minorities, their demands and the convergence of struggles.
“The whole purpose of the album is to convey this dimension of the society in which I live.
If others do not understand it, are afraid of it, do not want to see it, too bad, it is because they missed the boat of something ”, declares the artist.
The first time we met Eddy de Pretto, he seemed reserved, tense, as if every question concealed a trap that could put him up against the wall.
It was just before the release of
Cure
, his first album which has since become a public and critical hit.
Three years later, we find him a few days before the release of his second opus,
To all the bastards
, available this Friday.
This time, he seems perfectly at ease, joking.
Tease, even, when he mocks our pessimism about the reopening of concert halls, he who will embark on a tour this fall.
He is told that he looks in a very good mood for someone whose quill is so tortured.
“I am not in the same circumstances there as when I am in the middle of writing, filled with anguish.
There are two sides to me.
»Interview with Dr Eddy and Mr de Pretto.
In “Tout vivre”, you sing: “There are things that come out slowly, I prefer to take my time.
»You didn't want to hurry to write this second album?
For me, writing is never easy.
For the first one, I would go and take everything I had to take.
There, of course, there is more pressure.
I wanted to keep a certain innocence, a relevance, tell new stories and find what made the essence of the first album: the urgencies, the tensions, the brutality, the frontality in the verb.
In September 2019, coming out of the
Cure
tour
, I was incapable of that.
I was dead, I couldn't find the words, the desire, the distance to deal with new subjects that came to seek me.
It took me a bit of hindsight, of distance, to relive certain things that I no longer experienced.
As a note of intent, you say that this album is an “ode to the people next door, to the bizarre, to the freaks, to the strange”.
Was this your guideline while writing?
This is not how I make an album.
First I write songs that tell stories.
I realized, by putting them together, that there was a common denominator, that of the difference: should we put them forward or hide them?
In all the songs, I found something: taking responsibility, reclaiming one's weaknesses.
I've been called strange, weird, weird, monster throughout my teenage years and my whole young adult life.
All these burdens there, I turn them into something positive.
This is all the work of this second album, whether it is powerful, a force to move forward in life, rather than heavy to bear and victimary.
“My flaws have become attractive, I sometimes liked to magnify them.
"Is that what you talk about in" QQN "?
This album, with all the love that I received on the first one, allows me to highlight my differences, to say that they are there and that I will not be able to change them, nor to hide them.
Three years ago, I would have been incapable of it, I tried as much as possible to mold to society.
There, it's rather the opposite: it's about trying to be comfortable in my sneakers with what I have.
The return of people has helped me, but also the maturity, the fact of growing up, of taking a step back on myself, of meeting diverse and varied people.
Did you expect your song "Kid", which notably evokes the injunctions of virility, to resonate with so many people?
We don't expect, ever, that's beyond me.
When I make songs, I want us to share as much as possible, to fill rooms, to do crazy things.
After how it's going to be taken… There are a lot of things that I don't understand.
Other artists have appropriated “Kid”.
Barbara Pravi did a feminine rereading, candidates from "France has an incredible talent" delivered a choreography on the coming-out ... You appreciate?
Yes I saw.
It is a pleasure.
So much the better that it is reused and visible.
We are at a pivotal time when there is a diversification of speeches and that, for me, is the most important.
The "minority" representations in quotes are visible from a whole bunch of ways, with just as many humans and we see that there are several stories.
That it can be taken up by two gays in
Incroyable Talent
with their reinterpretation, their homosexuality, their history, it touches me.
Let that be picked up by [drag queen] Leona Winter in
The Voice
, too.
It is a reappropriation in its own style of a story that is mine, with its point of view.
That the representation is positive and multiple, I find that this is the beauty of our generation.
The extension of "Kid" in the new album is "La Zone", which deconstructs one of the other stereotypes linked to virility ...
Not that, not that ...
In part, it is about male passive penetration ...
(Astonished) Aaah, you understood the double meaning!
?
(He smiles) Not everyone understood, sir!
Wow, I'm touched, I like it!
This is the zone not to touch, where you must not go, because it's scary, because it's filled with virility, with a whole lot of padlocked things.
Yes, it's a bit of a sequel to
Kid
.
This is the “no go zone”.
I think that educating our straight boys, or gays for that matter, to work towards this, would undermine our societies.
Male deconstruction is played out seriously in the body, not just in language.
When you left "Cure", you told us: "I do my songs, I tell my stories, if that can move lines, respond to movements, so much the better", while claiming not to want to be a porter. flag.
Have you evolved on this subject?
No, I still think the same.
The song "La Fronde" nevertheless has something unifying, unifying in the face of conservatism ... You do not see yourself as a spearhead?
Oh my, I would never say that.
It's not in my temper.
I tell stories, it is the blotting paper of a company, it is my gaze, my point of view, it is just that.
What does it strike me?
To ask myself this question is my goal as an artist.
After that, am I the spearhead of something… It's too much responsibility.
I want to believe in the responsibility of telling stories without necessarily having the pressure of one community or another with a whole bunch of rules.
In “The Sling”, you sing “Tell the world that we are stronger, that nothing can stop us”.
Who is this "us"?
They are the bizarre, the strange, the outcasts, the monsters, the different.
Everyone can find themselves in these terms and that's what I like, the subjectivity of the bizarre.
I was told I was weird when I was younger because I didn't fit into certain codes.
But I'm sure those who told me weird were weird in the eyes of others.
These “we” are the people who simply want to be heard.
For me, this album is more unifying and collective.
That's why I allowed myself to use the “we” and the “we” a little more.
Because I had heard that 300,000 people on my first album had been touched by the sensitivity, the emotion and the passion of what I wanted to defend.
I wanted to take these people with me.
This song is a response to that “it was better before” thing.
Behind the scenes, we think of these mobilizations which brought together young people in particular around Black Lives Matter or the fight against global warming.
These are themes that you mention in the album.
Was it important for you to talk about it?
My breeding ground, my raw material, is society, as long as it vibrates in me I will always have stories to tell about it.
When I went to Créteil Soleil with my friends, we went for a walk and there were police checks, it was the black and the Arab who were put aside.
This is what I wanted to tell in
Val of Tears
.
I wrote it before Black Lives Matter.
That it resonates in a society and that finally we listen to these stigmatizations: happiness!
If, with the platform I have, I can bring a little grain of salt and make these inequalities heard more so as to transform them into power and in the evolution of society, it is won.
The minority alliance, for me, is very important.
I have friends who have multiple origins, I am linked to it, I live in it.
I can't fail to talk about it or pretend it doesn't concern me.
I am in this company, I live in Paris where we are diverse and this is a strength, a positive point.
What you are talking about here is the convergence of struggles, intersectionality.
Terms that frighten some, as we saw during the controversy over the pseudo “Islamogauchism” in universities.
Do you think that these demands, made in particular by young people, are not understood by the generations that preceded them?
On Twitter ?
Or more broadly ...
I don't know… That's the whole purpose of the album, to make this dimension of the society in which I live and in which I want to decipher everything heard.
If others don't understand it, are afraid of it, don't want to see it, too bad, they've missed something.
Our societies move, evolve and will no longer be represented in one and only one way.
In institutions, it must also follow, but this is not the case yet, or little.
Through the last words of "Tout vivre", the last song on the album, you suggest that there may not be a third opus.
You are serious ?
Totally.
I already didn't even know there would be a second, never knowing how to start a song, never knowing what topics were going to come and vibrate and ignite me.
I never have any assurance on that.
Writing nice little songs, a little cucul, me, that pisses me off.
Do you think that each word sung should have a weight, a meaning?
We must have things to say.
This is what I explain in
Tout vivre
: to have thickness, material, content.
If I have nothing to say, it will take as long as it takes to make the third album.
Maybe there won't be.
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