Popping Up: Stromae
INFLUENCE BEHIND THE FANTASTICALLY BIZARRE “PAPAOUTAI” VIDEO: “I wanted to represent the father in the video clip, but I didn’t want to have an absent father because it was too obvious. It was more realistic to have a father like in the video clip — he’s there, but he’s not really there. It could be like a dream or not, you know?”
WHERE’D HE GET HIS DANCE MOVES: “Actually, I love to dance, but we worked with a choreographer [Marion Motin] since the video for ‘Papaoutai.’ She asked me to express what I wanted to express, and she was inspired by all of my bizarre movements to make the choreography. She worked on ‘Tous Les Memes’ too, and the live performances. She’s the dancer on the screen actually, because I didn’t want to have real dancers on stage because I think that’s a little bit cliché, without judging anybody. I thought it was more funny to have fake dancers on the screen and be synchronized.”
STANDOUT TRACK THAT WASN’T THE SINGLE: A winding, heart-wrenching number, “Formidable,” took Stromae only one night to accomplish. “I began at midnight, and I finished the day after at 3 in the morning. I had the beginning melody, and for me, the story was already there. Like ‘formidable‘ (‘wonderful’), but the day after you are ‘fort minable‘ (‘pathetic’), which is like a wordplay about the wonderful and ridiculous side the day after. It was a love story, and I was really crying because I was inspired by all of those people that I met. This homeless man in the street who said to my ex-girlfriend and me: ‘Do you think you’re beautiful?’ He was so true to say that, but he was so drunk. But when you are drunk, you have half-complete craziness, and the rest is so real and spontaneous and honest. That’s why I never forget this sentence, and that’s why I put it in my song.”
INSPIRATION BEHIND THE HIDDEN-CAMERA “FORMIDABLE’ VIDEO: The clip came when Stromae’s team was hungering for a viral clip — and when Stromae himself was hungry. “It was like two months before, we were doing our ‘The Lessons By Stromae.’ A guy that I met in the street — I was eating in my small car — decided to film me, even though I didn’t want to. I said ‘No, stop. I will take a picture with you after I eat.’ He was like ‘No, no.’ He was just filming me, and he decided to put the video on the Internet. They put the video on the news. I was so surprised to see that this video was more interesting then the video that we tried to do. I was like: ‘Okay, you want blood? I’ll give you blood.’ That’s why we did it. The story was about this guy in the street, and maybe inspired also by Usher. In Germany, he was drunk on stage, and I was pretty sad for him because he has a beautiful career, and at one time in your life you made one mistake. You cannot have any mistakes in your life. You were drunk, and now you are the worst singer ever? Sometimes, we are so hard with people that try to do their job.”
WHAT’S UP NEXT?: “I want to make a video clip for every song on the album. Maybe for the third [album], I would want to have the videos out at the same time of the release. I think Beyonce did all the videos at the release, which is pretty nice. We wanted to do that for a long time, but she did it. [Laughs] But yeah, touring. We come back [to America] in September. We have two sold out shows here in New York. Almost all the tour is sold out, so that’s nice.”
Stromae’s Racine Carrée is available now for purchase on iTunes.
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