Christophe Willem is the big winner of the fourth, in 2006, of the show New star on M6. He definitely marked this show with this voice that made everyone agree, a well-asserted personality and then this smile of course. His first album, inventory, sold one million copies, remaining eight weeks number one in sales in France. The Christophe Willem-Zazie “combo” working immediately with two huge tubes: double i and Jacques said. The little boy, whose real name is Christophe Durier from Deuil-La Barre, then always appealed to his instincts. That’s how it’s always worked.
This Friday, September 16, 2022, Christophe Willem is releasing his sixth album, Panorama.
franceinfo: Each album has a new color, is a new adventure. Panorama is like an inventory. A point on your journey and your life as a man. Is that how to take it?
Christopher Willem: But I couldn’t have made a better presentation! I’ll let you talk, it’s very good!
This album is very close to your heart. You had written on the previous album and on this one, you called on a whole new team and it’s true that they really knew how to perceive what you wanted to say to the point of making it tailor-made?
Completely. To go back, there was the album Rio in which I was extremely invested. It was eight or nine extremely painful months because he couldn’t find his audience and didn’t settle at all. It was a big questioning and then the confinement arrived. And in fact, the latter really did me good. It was a moment, a very salutary forced stop. I found myself at my parents’, in my teenage room, with everything there is, the ghosts lying around, the teenage stories. I started to write, saying to myself: here, I have to describe what I feel, what I live at this moment. I quickly realized that I didn’t have to write this album because otherwise I was going to go back to the failings I had known. In this album, I really wanted to tell, that’s why it’s called Panorama. Indeed, it is the turn of the question, the turn of everything that concerns me and precisely, the place of the texts was predominant with Laurent Lamarca, who was a major meeting with Jean-Étienne Maillard. It was hours and hours of discussions and Laurent was able to fully decipher it. And suddenly, the same story seen through a different prism, by a different narrator, has a completely different color.
It’s true that there are ghosts in this album. Besides, you have decided to tell them. It’s the first time we’ve heard you talk about sexuality and that was really something that was very close to your heart. Was it important to let go so that you could move forward more as a man?
I have noticed, during this period of confinement, that to be connected to people’s intimacy, you must also reveal your intimacy and above all accept your vulnerability.
Christopher Willemat franceinfo
It is by accepting one’s vulnerability that one feels solid. In fact, me, I built a shell as my career progressed. And then, there was the urge to make her fart a little and to address the ghosts of the past, like the stigmatization that I felt, the school bullying and the way in which I was always singled out.
There are strong words, by the way! You talk about “queer“when you were insulted.
Yes. So, it’s very strong in the history that I knew. But there is no before and after to be known. That is to say, when I started this job by saying: here it is, all of a sudden, I will arrive in a world of adults sheltered from people who harassed me or trouble for years. Well, my disappointment was total when in one of the very first interviews I was able to do after leaving La Nouvelle Star, the first question was: “So, are you gay or not?“It’s true that it was a disappointment and I said to myself: oh no, in fact, it’s not calming down.
I have always explained to what extent for me, sexuality was a question of people, that I do not recognize myself in any gendered establishment.
Christopher Willemat franceinfo
That’s what I’m trying to highlight in the album and suddenly say: we’re going to pass this subject a little, which is a non-subject, in itself.
You have always doubted. I think you’re the only one who doesn’t trust yourself.
Now, more anyway. Once again, why was the failure of the previous album violent? Let’s be honest, I didn’t sell two records of this album, but I experienced it as a failure because in fact I built, if you will, my life and my career in a certain way. , being carried by the love of the public. And indeed, when I came across this bone, on an album that did not federate, precisely, I had the feeling that all the love I had received since La New star, it had been taken from me at once. It was a feeling of abandonment and that’s when I said to myself: at some point, you basically have to work on yourself to be able to receive the love of the public for what it is. So it’s true that love, the gaze of others, is something that nourishes you enormously. Once you come to peace with that and you receive that way.
Have you made peace with yourself?
Completely. Addressing all these themes, I can do so with as much peace of mind because it’s completely digested. And I hope that my way of expressing them will also help those who listen to him like me, he helped me. That’s what I want to explain with this album.
Christophe Willem is also on tour throughout France, such as at the Paris Paradis festival on September 17, in Forges-les-Eaux on January 25, 2023, on 27 in Le Havre, on 28 in Le Mans, on February 4 in Le Touquet and on March 18 in the Salle Pleyel.