For six years now, Frenchman Eddy de Pretto has been impressing the gallery with his sharp words and his mix of rap and French song. Here he is again with a record where he trades his observations on society to tackle head-on the theme of the intimate, the one that is experienced intensely, with a bang. The title of this record, a roller coaster of emotions, is fitting: Heart crash.
On the other side of the ocean, the young man, just thirty years old, is calm and presents his record with a controlled delivery. He is jealous of the first snows falling in Quebec, a territory where his show has taken him several times — and where he promises to return soon. The duty hooks him in the whirlwind of interviews, an exercise which he does not displease. “I don’t have a second to myself and… I love it!” I don’t think about my head like that anymore! » he laughs.
This new album, his third after Priest (2018) and To all the bastards (2021), reveals this through slightly more concise texts where he turns away from his role as analyst of the outside world to turn his gaze towards pulsing hearts.
“I put a bit of pressure on myself to have to be a sociological artist, to point out things a bit,” notes the artist born in Créteil, in the Paris suburbs. And there, I took away that expectation a little, and I focused on the things that were coming, in the most natural way and the most truly connected with what I was experiencing and what I am still experiencing today. today. »
It’s not necessarily easier to talk about emotions than to talk about climate change or war, he emphasizes, but the exercise “reconnected him to [lui]-even “. Nevertheless Heart crash does not indulge in the lace of feelings, Eddy de Pretto opting on several titles for a raw, frontal, even physical approach to love, among other emotions.
“I wanted to talk about a love and a happiness where there is no sentimentality, no futility. It’s not “cui-cui the little birds”, he illustrates. It’s quite radical in the subjects, we go into extreme sensations and that’s what I wanted to make people feel. It’s love sometimes bordering on toxicity. It’s love that is sometimes dripping, filled with fluid, juice, it sticks, it hurts, it “crashes” against the walls. »
Ascents and descents
Each title of Heart crash is in a certain way a facet of his prism, a look at a part of his emotional life, moving from the (desperate) quest for love to the relationship with solitude and the quest for serenity. “I assure you / I’m not a thief / I’m just looking for a little love / I am a poor person at heart / Who is dying from the inside / Above all, we must not tremble with fear,” he says on Beggar of love.
Eddy de Pretto has thus constructed a record not of a romantic breakup strictly speaking, but populated by ruptures in the backstory, of crashes in the course of sentimental life. “What makes us cling to a quest for happiness? he asks himself. And how we can fall so deep just behind, and then replay the game, only to get back up and put on the same defenses a bit to try to play again. ” And so on.
These rises and falls, Eddy de Pretto also put them to music, the ensemble alternating between rhythmic titles – with a very R&B approach from the 2000s – and soft pieces where the piano dominates, including Water of life with Juliette Armanet.
Heart crash begins with the dazzling R+V, where the chorus hammers home the names of gay artists who, “dead or alive,” guide him. The lot includes Rimbaud and Verlaine (hence the title), but also RuPaul, Elton John and Freddie Mercury. “Tell me how to respond to everyone who pretends it doesn’t exist!” / Help me bring out the rainbow that sinks again and again under the rubble,” sings de Pretto.
“It amused me to highlight personalities who created avenues of freedom that did not exist before,” explains the singer. For me, we must continue to promote more and more different discourses and perspectives, especially in pop music and in the spheres mainstream. »
This third disc appears independently on a label founded by the artist, Otterped Records — a name to read backwards to see better. We should not see it as a way of freeing ourselves from the yoke of the big players in the industry, he assures us. It’s more of a way to revitalize your work, your creativity, your motivation.
“I have a temperament that needs to be “boosted” by time that is pressing, by pressure, by something that is in the realm of risk in any case. The appeasement, the feeling a little over time, it’s something that puts me to sleep. » And Eddy de Pretto prefers what “crashes” and throbs.