Even though Grand Corps Malade didn’t come to Quebec for five years, he hasn’t forgotten his Quebec admirers. While waiting for a tour in 2025 in our Belle province, which he has visited fifteen times, the French slammer aims to present his eighte Album, reflectionshere to the press. The newspaper the encounter.
If he had not been working in France “on a big film” (Monsieur Aznavour, a fiction about the life of the singer who died in October 2018, which he wrote and directed), Grand Corps Malade would have spoken to us face-to-face, in a cafe in Montreal. That’s what he promises when he joins us on tour in 2025 for this brand new album.
Even via video conference, the 46-year-old singer-songwriter’s enthusiasm is contagious when he talks about his new musical baby.
From slam to sometimes sung choruses
Here are two or three albums that the artist (real name Fabien Marsaud) offers his audience slam songs with more sung choruses and more pop flavor than before. “I like that, but in concert my interpretations remain slammer,” says the man known for his strong rhyming lyrics.
The author of “Train Travel” and “Our Finest Years” wanted to thank his early admirers. Which he does beautifully with the title track of the album, with which he addresses his audience that has been following him for two decades.
“You and I are at odds in a weird way. I no longer know who the other person’s mirror is. People connect with more personal songs, I’m often told this and all artists get it; “It works when you can put a feeling into words,” says the artist.
The testimonies that affect him most belong to this category; He is at the height of happiness when we give thanks for “such a sentence or such a song.”
“Being known doesn’t do me any good, but being recognized for something you can do nourishes us,” adds the singer, who is a father of two.
It rightly reminds us of fatherhood and the time that passes far too quickly in the piece “Hold Back the Dreams”. A subject he knows well – his children are 10 and 13 years old – but which he approaches here with the desire to remember all the privileged moments, even if they are largely banal.
Homage to heroes
It’s easy to connect the play “The Day After” to the accident that changed the life of the Grand Corps Malade, because it’s about people who are hurt and those who carry on despite all odds. (When he was 20, the singer dove into an underfilled swimming pool, causing his cervical vertebrae to fracture. He woke up paralyzed and eventually regained partial use of his legs after intensive rehabilitation.)
However, the 6’4″ poet and slammer (hence his stage name, which refers to his height and his accident) doesn’t just draw on his own experiences; but also to children with cancer who cross his path thanks to the Sourire à la vie association, of which he is a sponsor.
“I wanted to pay tribute to them, these heroes who didn’t choose it,” explains the former athlete, for whom the discovery of the Slam in 2003 literally changed his life.
“If I hadn’t gotten to know the slam, I wouldn’t have had this career. I have always seen it as a game, writing, and I write about all topics, because life is not just about easy things,” says the one who sings about the years that pass in Wisdom and about love in I his wife ‘I’ll be there.
The most powerful lyric in this warm new offering? The one from the song 2083, which addresses the climate crisis from the perspective of his future grandson.
“It’s difficult to release an album and at the same time avoid this big problem of today and tomorrow. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. I wanted to imagine what the Earth will look like in 60 years. I’m not saying this song will change the world or politics, but if it can awaken one person, that’s it. »
-The album reflections by Grand Corps Malade is available on the platforms.