As we know, Stromae ended his last tour in 2015 physically and mentally exhausted by two years on the roads aggravated by a reaction to lariam, an anti-malaria treatment. In April 2018, in a rare interview with Laurent Delahousse on France 2, the Belgian star, temporarily withdrawn from the musical circuit, had modestly admitted having suffered from a burnout. “Even if we sell dreams, it remains a profession and, as in any profession, when we work too much, we end up with burnout“, he conceded.
This Sunday, January 9, in the 8 p.m. newspaper of TF1, Stromae went further, revealing to have had suicidal thoughts. He delivered himself in an unexpected “staging”, which created the event. Invited on the set face-to-face with journalist Anne-Claire Coudray, very elegant in a suit and tie, he spoke of his highly anticipated next album, Multitude, scheduled for March 4, before starting to sing in front of the camera in response to the journalist’s last, very personal question.
“You fought for seven years against a certain discomfort, you speak about it bluntly. In your songs you also talk a lot about loneliness. Did the music help you free yourself from it?“Asks the journalist Anne-Claire Coudray. And there, Stromae begins to sing, revealing live Hell, a new title from his future third album.
“I’m not the only one to be all alone, it already makes that less in the head. What if I counted how many there are, a lot. Everything I’ve ever thought of, to say that many others have already thought about it. But despite everything I feel all alone. Suddenly, I sometimes had suicidal thoughts, I’m not proud of it, sometimes we think it’s the only way to silence them, these thoughts that make me go through hell.“
The track was uploaded to music platforms at the same time.
In this short TV interview, Stromae gave some details about his new album, successor to Square root (2013) which raised him to the rank of star. He confided that he had been looking for this record “different grooves“all over the world and have”mixed up a lot of things“, like the harpsichord with Brazilian baile funk, taking”inspirations everywhere without being able to point a finger at a country“, hence the title Multitude.
He also pointed out that his family life with his wife, stylist Coralie Barbier, and their 3-year-old son had helped him keep his balance. As for his work on clips for others in recent years, notably for Billie Eilish, Bigflo & Oli, OrelSan or Dua Lipa, he has “really good” because “attention“was not then”more scope” on him.
With this nice media stunt of which he has the secret, orchestrated with the complicity of TF1, Stromae continues to increase the expectation around his next record, less than two months from its release. Social networks immediately ignited, Internet users saluting the sensitive lyrics of the song of “maestro“as much as the service and the”TV moment“.
This guy is a genius !
He comes, appropriates the JT set in an exceptional way, and creates a moment never seen on television …
One word: RESPECT #Stromae https://t.co/NvKPTrMDdp– Albin TEIXEIRA (@TeixeiraAlbin) January 9, 2022
At the beginning of December, he had already created the event at Tonight show by Jimmy Fallon on the American channel NBC, performing his first single Health, with a neat choreography worthy of a real music video.
The first three concerts-events of his tour scheduled until 2023 are scheduled even before the release of the album, in Brussels on February 22, Paris on February 24 and Amsterdam on February 27, 2022. Tickets for these first three shows have were sold in their entirety in just a quarter of an hour on the day they went on sale on December 3, said his record company.