After a detour of two albums towards hip-hop, Laurence Nerbonne makes The sky is beautiful look at the clouds an assumed return to light, bright and catchy pop. But the author-composer-performer-director-beatmaker is no less assertive, and above all totally in control of her boat.
“I wanted to make an album of tunes. Like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift or Sia,” says Laurence Nerbonne. Read the word tune in italics, meaning that each song had to be a bomb in itself, otherwise it ended up in the trash.
“I really wanted to take a summer trip, to have fun, to just enjoy it. With what we have just experienced with COVID, I myself wanted to listen to more happy music. » There is reggae and love and holiday songs, but like his idol Stromae, Laurence Nerbonne also wanted to counterbalance deeper texts with rhythms that make you dance and give his songs various reading levels.
Extract of Rainbow
“But if you don’t want to listen to the lyrics, you can just listen to it in your car and have fun,” explains Laurence Nerbonne, who decided to “embrace pop,” while being less into music. ‘confrontation.
“I use my frustrations to create,” says the woman who does almost everything on the album. I know where I’m going and I try to enjoy it. » If her “flow” remains rapped and there are still elements of hip-hop in her music, she therefore turned “without embarrassment” towards the choruses, the hooks and strong melodies, preferring songwriting to the exercise of purer style.
I had to get out of my own way a little. It was a lot of dilemmas.
Laurence Nerbonne
Roots
It’s a kind of return to the roots that Laurence Nerbonne makes in The sky is beautiful look at the clouds. Not only did she return to the pop of her first album, but she also wanted to rediscover the state of mind of youthful wonder. This is also the meaning of the album’s title.
Extract of Hometown
“When I was little, I often lay down on the grass to look at the shapes of the clouds. In childhood, you have no responsibilities, you have your whole life ahead of you… We seek all our lives to return to these first moments. »
Laurence Nerbonne has never hesitated to say what she thinks about the place of women in the music industry in general, and in the world of rap in particular. Tired of talking about it? No. Especially tired of seeing… that things aren’t moving much. “I would love to tell you that things have changed a lot, but no. You just have to look at the playlist on Spotify of Quebec rap… there is 1 girl in 200! » She is surprised by this delay in a society as progressive as Quebec.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Laurence Nerbonne has just launched her fourth solo album.
Internationally, what’s playing is Cardi B, Nicky Minaj, Doja Cat… We’re being a little tough [au Québec]. And it’s sad for young girls because they don’t have role models, and they benefit less from structures.
Laurence Nerbonne
Everything is linked, she recalls: record companies, radio programming and festivals. “It’s always the chicken or the egg. We say yes, but women don’t fill venues… but if you don’t put women on your shows, they don’t develop an audience! »
Adapt
This is Laurence Nerbonne’s fourth album in less than eight years.
I haven’t been idle. But when I look at Taylor Swift, who does album after tour after album, I tell myself that I have a damn job! But that’s it today, music goes fast.
Laurence Nerbonne
Consumption has changed as much as production methods, and she believes that we must now be able to move quickly to keep pace with the era of single. But why make an album then?
“In Quebec, this is the most profitable way. The subsidy system is made like that. It’s also a way of making and explaining a work, and artistically, I find that it pushes me to make better songs. But I think the two models can coexist. »
His common thread was therefore to “create earworms”, also to write them in a clear and well-crafted manner. “So that nothing is too unclear.” »
The challenge remained to make the language “sound and resonate”, which is not always easy in French. “It’s a nice puzzle. » But singing in the Tremblay language has always been important to her. She plays as much with urban language as that of her childhood in Gatineau, and has worked a lot so that there is no distance between her and her texts.
“ We dance again, for example, I rewrote it until I was 100% sure it was completely me. There was a lot of trial and error. »
Excerpt fromWe dance again
At 39, Laurence Nerbonne continues to love her job. Anxiety is still a part of her life, but she understood that it would be her lot, whatever profession she might pursue. And that at the end of the day, she could not help but be an artist, whether in song or in visual art.
“It’s going quickly in my head! It’s a way to center myself, to calm myself down. And it’s easier to talk about myself through works than face to face. »
The release of a new album obviously comes with its dose of anxiety, but also with a mixture of pleasure. As she prepares to go on tour again, Laurence Nerbonne hopes in any case that it will be part of the soundtrack of our summer. “I would like people to recognize themselves in the songs. That they feel like me when I listen to them, and that they want to live in the present moment. »
Pop
The sky is beautiful look at the clouds
Laurence Nerbonne
STE-4