If Grand Corps Malade has not come to Quebec for 5 years, he has not forgotten his Quebec admirers. While waiting for a 2025 tour in our Belle Province which he has visited fifteen times, the French slammer has made it a point to present his 8e album, Reflectionsto the press here. The newspaper the encounter.
If he wasn’t “working on a big film” in France (Mr. Aznavour, a fiction about the life of the singer who died in October 2018 that he wrote and directed), Grand Corps Malade would have spoken with us face to face, in a café in Montreal. This is what he promises to do when he comes to tour us for this brand new album in 2025.
Already by videoconference, the enthusiasm of the 46-year-old singer-songwriter, when he talks about his new musical baby, is contagious.
From slam to choruses sometimes sung
Here are two or three albums that the artist (real name Fabien Marsaud) offers his audience slam songs with more sung choruses and a more pop flavor than before. “I like that, but in concert my interpretations remain more slam,” says the man who is known for his strong lyrics with rhyming lyrics.
To his early admirers, the author of Train travel and of Our best years wanted to say thank you. Which he does in a nice way with the title song of the album in which he addresses his audience who have been following him for two decades already.
“They and I rub shoulders in a funny way. I come to no longer know who the mirror of the other is. People connect with more personal songs, I’m often told this and all the artists have understood it; It works when you can put a feeling into words,” says the artist.
The testimonies that touch him the most are of this order; he is at the height of happiness when we say thank you for “such a phrase or such a song”
“Being known doesn’t bring me anything, but being recognized for something you know how to do, that’s what nourishes us,” adds the singer who is twice a father.
It precisely evokes fatherhood and the time that passes too quickly in the room Hold back the dreams. A subject that he knows well – his children are aged 10 and 13 – but which he approaches here through the desire to remember all the privileged moments, even if on the whole banal.
Tribute to heroes
It is easy to connect the room The day after to the accident that changed the life of Grand Corps Malade, because it talks about injured people and those who push forward despite adversity. (When he was 20, the singer took a dip in an insufficiently filled swimming pool, which caused a fracture of his cervical vertebrae. He woke up paralyzed, then eventually regained partial use of his legs after having done a lot of rehabilitation).
However, the 1.94 m poet and slammer (hence his stage name referring to his height and his accident) does not only refer to his own experience; but also to that of children suffering from cancer who cross his path thanks to the association Smile to life of which he is the godfather.
“I wanted to pay tribute to them, to these heroes who did not choose to be,” explains the former athlete for whom the discovery of slam, in 2003, literally changed his life.
“If I hadn’t encountered slam, I wouldn’t have had this career. I have always taken it as a game, writing, and I write on all subjects, because life is not only made up of light things”, says the one who sings about the years that pass in Wisdom and his love for his wife in I will be there.
The most powerful text of this warm new offering? The one from the song 2083 who addresses the climate crisis from the perspective of his future grandson.
“It is difficult to release an album while avoiding this major issue of today and tomorrow. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. I wanted to imagine what the earth will be like in 60 years. I’m not claiming that this song is going to change the world or change politics, but if it can awaken one person, that will be it. »
-The album Reflections by Grand Corps Malade is available on the platforms.