“There is more doubt than before”but “doubt moves forward” : Angèle, Belgian princess of pop, admits “pressure” of a second album that she is currently defending on stage, carried by the“euphoria” festivals.
After the success of his first opus brol (1.5 million copies sold), one could think that the singer saw herself at 26 as established. But the cover of his second disc, Ninety-Five (95, her date of birth), released on December 10, 2021, where she is in a rollercoaster, already delivers a clue to a more complex experience.
“There is more doubt than before”, she told AFP. In its beginnings, it darkened “a little head down, no matter what”. “My return with ‘Nonante-Cinq’ was seen as that of a great confirmed artist: it’s very flattering, but very creepy”. “As if I had no room for error, when in fact it’s only my second album, my second tour”.
“The first album set the bar super high, the sales were indecent. But I didn’t necessarily have the recipe, things escaped me”, unfolds this child of the ball (actress mother, Laurence Bibot; singer father, Marka; rapper brother, Roméo Elvis). So the doubt is “always there, well installed”. But she learns “to work around trust, legitimacy, to try to understand why doubt has its place”. “Doubt Advances”she breathes.
She also asks “the place too important” social networks in his life. The artist was born there, posting covers at the very beginning. Its notoriety has been nourished by an exponential exposure. But the author-composer then pays the price, loved or hated in waves in this “increasingly powerful vortex”.
“I learned to protect myself, before I had no awareness of what I was showing, especially for my private life. Now I have set limits, but I do not yet have the mental strength to extricate”
She describes herself as an “addict”: “sometimes it’s not me who commands, it’s my body that takes the phone. I have to discipline myself in the face of that”. “With social networks, positive or negative enthusiasm takes precedence over reality”, she adds. Angèle was able to talk about it with the British megastar Dua Lipa, on the occasion of their duet Fever. “Having the same age, being two women spotted quite young thanks to the networks, very adored and very criticized, on different scales, it reassures me that an artist like her is facing the same fears as me”.
Even though Ninety-Five is more introspective and melancholy than brol, more festive, the link with the public is always there in concert. Spectators stayed late into the night from Thursday to Friday to take their hits to the top of their lungs at the Aluna Festival, in Ruoms (central-eastern France).
The interpreter of the tube Swing your what is excited to dive back into summer festivals and this “euphoria you feel in the audience and on stage”. She had tasted it as a simple festival-goer at 17, with her best friend at the Belgian festival Pukkelpop, in mode “nights under the tent, on the spot as much for the music as for the party”.
Having become an artist, her first major festival was We Love Green in 2018 in Paris. She expected at best a thousand people. “I turn my head, it was full!” (over 30,000 people).
“It was catastrophic, nothing was right, my pants were falling, my case (microphone) was not holding.”
Seen from the public, she convinced at the time, without an album yet released. Accompanied by a group and dancers, her show is now well established, between “quiet songs” and those for “to embark” the public. Like the concert premiere, “More Sense”which sticks “on the return of the public” after two seasons cut short by the health crisis.