Bilal Hassani is Thursday the guest of Emilie Mazoyer's show "Musique!"

to present "Lights off", his new single.

The singer evokes the messages hidden in his tracks, which his fans have fun deciphering, as well as his love for foreign languages, which he would like to explore even more in his music.

INTERVIEW

We don't stop him anymore.

Bilal Hassani unveiled in April 2019 his first album, 

Kingdom

, then in November 2020 his second opus, 

Against evening

.

At the end of May 2021, he released 

Lights off

, a new unreleased track which seems to announce a third album.

Yet these are not empty songs that this workaholic writes.

Guest Thursday of Emilie Mazoyer

Musique's show!

, the singer reveals a little of what he hides behind hyper-dancing melodies and lyrics blurring the borders of languages.

>> Find Music!

every day from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

"I have a particular life and a particular story to tell from different angles. I want to do it in several languages, with several styles, several ways of presenting, etc. My songs always have a message", explains Bilal Hassani , who explains that he needs to be constantly working on a project. 

"French is such a rich language that we lose the mystery"

But the prolific author likes his messages to be covered up.

"I don't see myself as a guru or a prophet who would make people have a certain way of life or have the same opinions as me," he warns.

"But I'm a messenger. Anyway, I like to tell stories, and stories that you don't understand the first time you listen."

Bilal Hassani prefers to leave a mystery in the stories he sings, so that his words resonate with everyone's life.

"You can reinterpret all my songs any way you want and put them back in your sauce for you so that they belong to your personal journey," he says.

"And I think it's something that's a bit difficult to do in French, because it's such a rich language that you lose the mystery."

"Finding the happy medium between intimate texts and dancing melodies"

The singer does not also like to tell in an interview the meaning of one or another of his titles. This is particularly the case with 

Lights off

, his latest single. "This song is about a very hard and heavy subject, an experience that happened to me and that I don't like to share at all," he says, without saying more. "But my fans have found the true meaning of this song, and have managed to transcribe it into a text where they describe all the lyrics and do their interpretation."

This is ultimately the meaning of his title 

Basic

, taken from his first album, that Bilal Hassani deflowers. "It's a song that talks about the LGBTQIA + community and its struggle, and how difficult it is to find your place in a homophobic society, etc.," he reveals. "But what I like is doing festive songs to make people have fun. You have to find the right balance between lyrics and melodies. In the studio, it's a real job that have fun. "

"We don't know everything 

Basic 

says, because there is a lot of English and a lot of Anglicisms," admits the singer.

It must be said that juggling languages ​​is second nature to him.

And English has always been part of her life.

"My dad remarried when I was three with a woman who spoke only English. I helped her with French, and she taught me English naturally, because we loved it ", smiles Bilal Hassani.

Malay, Arabic and Korean

“Between my daddy's home and my mom's home, there was French and English. And there was also Arabic and Malay, because my mother-in-law is from Singapore and has a heritage of Malaysia ", continues the former representative of France at Eurovision Song Contest.

"My little brother and my little sister are even worse than me, they constantly switch between the four languages!"

And it is through music that Bilal Hassani has further expanded his linguistic universe.

"There is also Korean which is a language that I love, because Korean culture fascinated me very early on", adds the one who learned a little Korean in phonetics, thanks to the K-pop of which he is. fan since he was 11 years old.

A detour through Sweden

No wonder Bilal Hassani wanted to participate from a young age in the international Eurovision Song Contest, where he represented France in 2019. "Now, I have fans who come from Romania, Greece, Germany and everywhere, "he rejoices, citing those he affectionately calls the" international habibis ", according to the nickname his fans have chosen for themselves.

"I want to talk to them too."

This link between music and travel should be reflected in Bilal Hassani's third album, which the release of his single 

Lights off 

suggests.

Several titles from this next album were indeed created in Sweden, the world epicenter of the creation of pop hits.