An emotional return for Stromae. Guest of TF1’s 8pm newscast this Sunday, the Belgian singer unveiled “Hell”, a new title from his future album which evokes “suicidal thoughts”. “Suddenly, I sometimes had suicidal thoughts / I am not very proud of it / We sometimes believe that it is the only way to silence them / These thoughts which make me live a hell”, we hear in this piece with strong autobiographical hints.
The Belgian presented this piece at the end of the television news, in a skilful staging, as if it was the last response, in song, to the short interview he had just given on the set.
The track was uploaded to music platforms at the same time. Stromae’s new album, Multitude, will be released on March 4 and it is one of the most anticipated French-speaking records of 2022.
The artist has recovered from a burnout
Stromae, withdrawn from the musical circuit since 2015, had already unveiled in mid-October a first single, “Health”, dedicated to small hands, daily workers to whom we do not always pay attention. This time “Hell” is a bit darker and more personal. Like an echo of his past torments. His latest album, Square root (2013, after Cheese in 2010), had tipped this 36-year-old musician into another dimension, for better or for worse.
This public and critical success had taken him on two years of crazy tours around the world which had wrung him both physically and mentally. “Even if we sell dreams, it remains a job and, like in any job, when we work too much, we end up with burnout,” he conceded in 2018 in an interview with France 2.
In the 8 p.m. newspaper of TF1, Stromae said that the work on clips for others in recent years – Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa or OrelSan, among others – had “really done him good” because “the attention Was then “no longer carried” on him.
First concerts in February
With this televised passage, Stromae continues to increase the attention around his next album. Internationally, he had already provided a remarkable performance in early December around “Health” in the show of Jimmy Fallon, on the American channel NBC.
The first three concert-events of his tour (which will take him until 2023) are scheduled in Brussels on February 22, Paris on February 24 and Amsterdam on February 27, 2022. Tickets for these first three shows have been sold in full. in just a quarter of an hour on the day they went on sale on December 3, his record company had said.