Entitled 8, Maryze’s first album proves that when it came time to make choices, she made the right choice: that of leaving her city of Vancouver and her job as a journalist with the French service of Radio-Canada to live her life in music, full time and to Montreal. Between (hyper) pop and R&B, the singer-songwriter sings of the road travelled, “my relationship with myself and others, through ruptures, forgiveness and self-acceptance, a way of paying homage to the little me, the teenager of the time, who has been through a lot of things and tell him that today, things are better. We got through it.”
Pop-punk was a generational phenomenon which, fifteen years later, took its revenge. Right here at home, Sophia Bel and D4vid Lee have offered us albums where sweet and emotional punk transpires through modern productions influenced by electronic pop, rap and R&B. Now it’s Maryse Bernard’s turn, her real name, to contribute to this form of return to grace of a musical scene often snubbed on 8an album full of musical references intelligently amalgamated by the musician and her collaborator Solomon KI.
“Yes, it’s a bit like the revenge of pop-punk, but also in a more personal way on my song emo “, which we will indeed describe as the most rock of this eclectic album, but a rock that promises to be acoustic first, before the guitar chords come to plow the chorus, probably like at the time of the group Woodmen, that Maryze had founded at the age of 15, in Victoria. “In this song, the lyrics were inspired by this guy I was dating who snubbed my musical tastes. At the time, I loved Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, bands like that. When he sent me his playlists, I listened to them, but when it was I who sent them to him, he didn’t take me seriously… Yes, we made fun of this music, but it still reached a whole generation of teenagers, it had an impact on their lives, it’s strong. »
“We believed that this music explained the story of our lives and, in the same way, my album reflects different stages of mine, including my adolescence. “A time that Maryze describes in rather dark terms, with its depressive passages, its destructive cycle, its mental health problems. The ordeal is at the heart of the song Skeletons, powerful duet with the Montrealer Backxwash where the emotion is increased tenfold by the contrast between the fine and enchanting timbre of Maryze’s voice and that, rough and furious, of the rapper.
Composed almost five years ago, this song is also the only one in French on the album. “It’s personal, I’m very vulnerable to it, that’s why I wrote it in French. [Avant de déménager à Montréal], I wrote in French when I didn’t want people to understand me, since I was part of an English-speaking music scene. So writing in French was a way for me to keep certain things secret, but well, today, in Montreal, everyone understands me. »
It was Backxwash who, according to Maryze, managed to put an end to Skeletons. “Honestly, I wish there were more songs in French on the album; I had also composed two others, but they fit less with the rest of the album. They will appear on an upcoming project “that I want in French, because it’s part of my identity”. English-speaking mother, but father of Breton origin, enlightened music lover, who in the 1990s hosted a musical program on Radio-Canada in Vancouver, where Maryze grew up.
“My father always brought home records, records from all over the world that fed my influences: Celtic music, Latin music, more pop stuff, sometimes more alternative stuff, I grew up in everything that”, says Maryze, also fond of contemporary R&B, that of Destiny’s Child, Ciara or Alicia Keys of her childhood, and whose influence can be heard on pearls like Mutable and Experiments. Added to these are the electronic pop colors inspired by the work of the craftsmen of PC Music, the flagship label of the hyperpop current.
The more discerning will even recognize Maryze’s borrowing from Breton musical folklore: the refrain of Witnessa languorous electro-pop ballad, is that of Tri Martolod (“Three Sailors”), a traditional tune made famous in the 1970s by Alan Stivell, more recently covered by Nolwenn Leroy, and from which the Celtic rap group Manau drew a hit in la Francophonie in 1998 with the song Dana’s tribe.
“The original version in Breton was played a lot at home when I was little, recalls Maryze. I don’t think the English-speaking public will recognize this melody, but I really like it and wanted to include it on the album, along with an original text. It’s like a little message addressed to my ancestors…”