Ariane Roy makes pop and is right not to bother with the label, since she does good stuff. “Pop, we often perceive it as something superficial, whereas it is broad and rich, she says. Prince, he made pop, and he was a great master of music! Pop has depth, while it is often associated with lightness and insignificance. Often, we hear people say: “It’s good, but it’s pop”. It’s a weird sentence…”
The young singer-songwriter has an informed perspective on the matter due to her musical training. His family is a music lover. When she was little, it was classical music every Sunday on the stereo. His father is a jazz fan. “I found it boring, jazz, but I grew up in it, comments Ariane. When I got to CEGEP, I studied jazz music, so I ended up getting really interested in it,” until I got a bachelor’s degree in jazz singing.
It does not agree on medium pleasure, his first album released last Friday. “It doesn’t interest me — I mean, I like jazz, I sang about it, but I broke free from that. [Sur mon premier album] I wanted to present myself differently, artistically. I still like to sing about it, but that’s not the direction I want to take. Maybe one day I’ll do like Joni Mitchell and record a jazz album. »
The great Joni, one of her inspirations, “human as well as artistic”. Chet Baker too, the jazz trumpeter as much as the singer, “for his phrasing”, that of Ariane being neat, frank, her velvety tone of voice. Let’s add to the list of his influences Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Cecile McLorin Salvant and Stacey Kent, “but I listen to less of them today”, now preferring for example the grace of another great jazz fan, Diane Tell, to whom Ariane pays tribute at each concert by taking up her success Often a very long time (from the album chimeras, 1982). “A pioneer — you have to listen to her old albums again. It’s ringing ! »
Ariane is also inspired by the affirmation of Christine and The Queens and the “sharp, raw” texts of Mitski, with whom she shares the same flair for heady melodies. Languorous rock, fuzzy guitar,learn more. The synth-funk-rock rundown kundah following. The synth pop song girl to wear, co-written with her friend Lou-Adriane Cassidy, with its little The Police-style guitar motif, is also addictive: “I run away from blind spots and I smile / In the mirror for my friends / I imitate those who see nothing / I would like to believe myself in love / I would no longer be a girl to wear. »
” learn more, is to free oneself from one’s faults, to accept one’s journey, one’s apprenticeship”, the guiding theme of the album. “A way of saying: here is what does not work in me. It’s not necessarily beautiful or glorious, but it is important. As with Mitski, Ariane Roy wraps her moods in groovy music. “We get along, it’s still pop, but in my lyrics, I wanted to be more intimate, more frank than before,” she says. I think sometimes I could hide behind the writing. At some point, I decided to be more vulnerable, more direct and not go through a thousand ways to say what I have to say. I was there. »
This first album co-produced with Dominique Plante, she says, “represents two years of work, particularly these two years of pandemic. It represents the research that I did to find my sound, to find what I had to say, where I wanted to go musically. […] From the start, I allowed myself to follow my artistic impulses, my inspirations of the moment, without giving myself any direction beforehand. Just the desire to do what I want, but with the desire to honor all my musical influences”.
After getting noticed in what she calls “the run de lait” competitions and musical showcases — “Destination Chanson river” at the Festival en chanson de Petite-Vallée, Cabaret Festif, finalist at the Festival international de la chanson de Granby et des Francouvertes in 2020 —, Ariane Roy admits feeling nervous and stress at the idea of finally presenting yourself to the real public, outside the circuit of industry professionals.
“Of course I hope my songs will reach people, but first and foremost, I do this for myself, to flourish. Obviously, I make music to be heard and identified with, so I certainly have expectations of that. On the other hand, when the album comes out, these songs don’t really belong to me anymore. It’s a good exercise in letting go: you give everything you have to give, you have control over the album until the end of the process, but once it’s started, you have to move on thing. It’s very liberating. »