Slimane is an actor, author, composer and performer. He was discovered during his participation and victory in the fifth season of the TF1 show The Voice in 2016. Since his titles, his albums have been noticed, acclaimed, just like his pen since he writes a lot for others like recently, Christophe Willem with ps i love you. Impossible not to approach his collaboration with Vitaa who had a huge success with the song It comes and goes in 2019. He just released a new album titled Chronicles of a Cupid including 19 new titles.
franceinfo: You took the time to stop and write. What does this album represent for you?
Already time. It’s the first time I’ve had so much time to think about the songs, to think about an album. The solo return too, which was beginning to be long overdue for me. I started to need to tell my stories, to sing them and then the love, the love which is the common thread of this album. Love in all its forms, love, family.
You really bring down the armor: there is also a song called The armor And it is not a hazard. Where does this letting go come from? Have you found the right person? Have you found a balance?
The age, the passage of time, the fact of having become a dad, the fact of having also made peace with me, of understanding that finally I was someone who looked for love all his life. I think that’s why I sing and I realized that in the end, I really had a lot of love around me and that I was lucky and blessed in the end.
What does being a dad change?
It changes everything. It calls everything into question and at the same time, it makes everything obvious. There are questions that we no longer ask ourselves at all, that we have asked ourselves all our lives, such as the fact of needing love. There are also other questions that I didn’t ask myself at all. The recklessness of youth too, an awareness of the future, of after and even after me. But also as values, as strengths to my daughter. It’s quite upsetting.
So precisely, let’s talk about these values, in any case those that have been given to you. I am thinking in particular of your Algerian family. You grew up in Chelles, in Seine-et-Marne, you sing in Fears : “I have a fear of emptiness. I get that from my mother. I know what it’s like when there’s nothing to eat“. How was your childhood then?
I was lucky to have parents who love each other, parents who love me and who give me the right to dream, to do what I wanted to do.
Alongside this freedom, this love, a rather precarious social situation. But at the same time I got so much of everything else and it’s so much more important things that I’m more and more grateful to my parents and what they left me, what they gave me .
Writing happens very quickly and allows you to express yourself. You have experienced a lot of homophobic hatred on social networks, and not only. You had it in your head, we’re not going to lie to each other and your answer was this song: Come, we love each other. It’s a nice answer for you, a way of not, precisely, returning violence or a negative image.
I don’t have the strength and I don’t believe I have the power to educate or change people. But on the other hand, I believe that I have the possibility perhaps of ensuring that those who love each other, love each other even more and I believe that we need it. Come, we love each other that was it, a bridge between people, between people who wanted to. It’s a song that I still sing on stage because it just makes me feel good and I feel like it makes those who listen to it feel good. In fact, we do not realize how difficult it has become. You see, people don’t say to themselves anymore: “I like you“, for example, even in families. Me, it shocks me. Me, I say: I love you to my mother every day, to my brothers. And I find that this song, under its little airs, really makes good.
We were talking earlier about the importance of the text, of the melody. You have written a lot for others, it does not stop. Is that a way of growing up, too? I am thinking of Florent Pagny, Vitaa or even Jenifer.
It’s a way of sharing, already. I started with gospel. In a choir, we are all always there to support each other and to share together. Already, music, for me, is that. Afterwards, yes, it’s sure that when you have people you’ve listened to for years who come to you and say to you: “It would be cool if you made me a song!“Yes, of course, you do and each time you grow. You grow because you discover an artist more deeply, you share things and it’s also for an author, at least for me, the opportunity too often to say things differently than I do for myself.
As an author, I like to put myself in someone else’s shoes because it allows me to be free.
What is happiness ?
I believe that to be happy is to learn to be satisfied with the present and to make peace with oneself. But it’s a fight of a lifetime. Being happy, I think, is complicated. There are moments of happiness and being on the path, not wanting to escape, I think that’s already a good thing.
This album is also about remembering the essentials?
Yes. Remembering the essential, remembering happiness, remembering love.
It’s called : Chronicles of a Cupid. Amazing, this word Cupid…
Yes because ultimately he helps everyone find love. But him ?