Stromae: "I came to feel completely empty, I had nothing to say"

Euphoric downloads that sounded like the electronics of a massive

were linked with intimate songs about racism, hypocrisy, the identity of the son of an immigrant and being orphaned at the age of nine when his father was killed during the great genocide in Rwanda, in 1994.

Stromae (Etterbeck, Belgium; 1985) was a supernova in European music

that shone brightly during the cycle of two exciting albums, between 2010 and 2015, but international success caused a saturation that the Belgian prodigy solved the French way: he disappeared .

The singer, composer and producer announced an indefinite break that has lasted until this year in which he returns very differently: with an album in which folk is the main tool to sing about social inequality, about being a father and about, also , overcome

.

"Sometimes I had suicidal thoughts and I'm not proud of them / Sometimes you think it's the only way to silence them / Those thoughts that make me live badly," he sings on

, one of the 12 songs on his third album,

.

An album that for years had the working title of

.

"Since

came out , in 2013, I knew that my next album would be called

.

and my

It would also be folkloric, but then this girl's album came out, what's her name, Taylor Swift, and I thought, 'Okay, maybe that's not a good idea,'" he laughs in a Zoom interview from his company's Brussels office. , which he shares with his wife and brother Nice and kind, he is

, but he confesses "nervous and insecure" before the release of the album.

do

Is it a reference to Walt Whitman's verse? No, I didn't know that, more journalists have already told me. We all ask the same thing. (Laughs) No, I didn't mean that. , well, I contradict myself./ (I am immense, I contain multitudes)".

OK, I love it.

It makes perfect sense. Do you contradict yourself on a regular basis? Yes, of course, all the time.

I love having doubts and I don't have much confidence in myself.

I always ask myself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?"

I'm always hesitating.

I know that's my strength and my weakness. It's funny because live or in your TV appearances you seem to have a lot of confidence. Yes, it seems.

But I'm not, I'm not that confident.

I always start concerts very stressed and anxious, I only start having fun halfway through.

Now I think about everything that is going to come, the tour,

the videos, the interviews, the television programs.

and I was quite overwhelmed. Why the emphasis on the idea of ​​folklore on the album? Pop music no longer inspires me like when I was younger, I wanted to delve into traditional cultures.

The title of

It refers to the diversity of influences and themes that are in the songs, also of characters.

I love to sing putting myself in someone else's shoes. Is it because your life has changed or because your tastes have changed? (Laughs).

Maybe I've grown older, yes.

You're right, I've changed and my tastes have changed, and I was a little tired of every verse being a bombshell.

I already made two albums like this.

Now I've made a slower and quieter album because I'm a little older. I didn't want to call you old... Well, it's true, I'm older (laughs). In 2016 you left music.

Why did you make that decision? I felt there was too much attention on me, everything was focused on me.

I needed to rest and have a normal life, normal things like getting married and having a child (who was born in 2018).

It was important for me to get my strength back and come back with something to say.

At the end of 2015 it was completely empty.

He simply had nothing to say.

And that's the worst thing for an artist, making an album with nothing to say.

That's why it was really important for me to live normal experiences, to have a new point of view.

I would never make a record if I don't think I have anything relevant to say.

So yeah, it was important for me to take some time and not go through the motions, not make a record for the money, which is the wrong reason.

Now the only reason I've made a record is because I want to. Did you come to hate being Stromae? Not exactly, but I was glad to have my real name, Paul van Haver, and to have a stage name.

The advantage of this is that when I get tired of being that image, of being that character,

I'm leaving it at home and I'm Paul van Haver. Have you prepared yourself now to avoid that degree of saturation? make my life a little easier.

I am very grateful to them because now it is much easier for me to work than it was years ago.

Yes, it is an important question that we ask every day here, together with my team. There are several songs on the album where you talk about depression, sadness, even suicide, and a society focused on entertainment, but that fails to be happy.

Why do you care about these issues? Because that's what I feel.

Many happy songs come out, maybe that's why I love to make sad songs too, because life has moments of sadness and happiness,

And that's what I wanted to capture on the album.

I even love to mix both things, sad lyrics and happier music. In your previous album you dedicated a song to the absence of the father (

) and now you sing a lot about being a father. Yes, it's like the sequel to

.

One day I got into the car with my son and he asked me to put

I got really excited because, well, you know, I wrote it before he was born and now he was asking me for it.

But what I was about, yes, now I sing about being a father, yes, I talk about poop a lot on the album because I had my hands in shit all the time (laughs). In your songs you always avoid clichés and typical solutions.

Is the cliché the enemy of art? Perhaps yes, I am always fighting against clichés, although it is something completely subjective, because what is a cliché for me may not be for you, or vice versa.

It's like trends.

The beginning of a trend is when no one wants to wear something, then everyone wears it, then no one wants to wear it again, and then 10 years later we wear it, and so on and on and on.

The same thing happens with clichés.

But yes, I am always fighting against clichés.

On the album there are elements of Latin American, African, Arabic and even Asian music.

Have you made an effort to create a global sound?

And I know that "a global sound" can also be a cliché... (Laughs) You're right.

But you know what?

The album has many influences, as you say, African, Arab, Asian and Latin American influences.

But for me it was important to mix it all up.

I didn't want to have one song from Asia and another from Africa, but to combine everything, a drum kit that came from Afropop, a Latin American melody and completely different lyrics.

I wanted to mix a lot and not emphasize anything in particular.

I really wanted to have the feeling of being a bit lost. You avoid the sound of Anglo-Saxon pop.

Have we lived under an excessive fascination with American and British music? Yes, and I think we know it.

Today we define pop music in relation to British music, but it is not true.

That is its origin, but today it is very difficult to define pop.

There are many things that I like about the United Kingdom and the United States, many influences such as hip hop or

, for example, but they are influences as important as cumbia, Afropop, Congolese rumba or Brazilian funk dance.

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