Quebec music is going through difficult times, as we learned this summer that barely 23 French-language songs from here appeared on the platforms in the ranking of the 1000 most listened to songs in Quebec. Nobody expects 2024 to be the year the trend reverses, but things will get better at some point, believes Mario Lefebvre, one of the music industry's top personalities. “Music is cyclical. “It comes and it goes,” the man who was one of the architects of Céline Dion’s international career likes to remember. Who knows, maybe Quebec could soon produce the new big world star?
“This is not the first time that Quebec music is going through a crisis. Even in the early 1980s we had difficulty engaging with the public. Record sales had collapsed. Then came MusiquePlus. There was excitement with Mitsou, Les BB… At the end of the 1980s, Quebec music was doing much better,” notes Mario Lefebvre, who has 45 years of experience in the industry.
Mr. Lefebvre was initially a music journalist before moving to the Warner record company and then to the CBS label, which became Sony. As he rose in his career, he met the biggest international stars, from Michael Jackson to the Rolling Stones, including Leonard Cohen. He also helped make Francis Cabrel “the most popular French singer in Quebec” and also boosted the careers of Quebec artists abroad: that of the pianist André Gagnon, but of course that of Céline.
“I was lucky. “I was always in the right place at the right time,” he admits, knowing that he lived through the industry's best years. It was at a time when albums were sold by the bucketful. The record companies for which he worked had the luxury of spending lavishly.
Then the emergence of illegal download sites in the early 2000s completely destroyed this economic model. Today everything happens on the platforms. Even music radio stations have lost their luster. Since CD sales have fallen to zero, it is no longer the big record companies that set the pace in the industry, but rather the big promoters like Live Nation. Concerts have become the main source of income for artists, if not the only one.
“They say things aren't going well in Quebec, but things aren't much better elsewhere. They say shows have replaced records. But maybe shows are a livelihood for 5 or 10% of artists. There are many who used to make a living from records but can no longer do so. It has also been said that copyright is the future, but companies that bought artist catalogs are now in trouble. The reality is that copyrights don't pay that much,” emphasizes the man who ran Distribution Select, the largest CD distributor in Quebec, in the 1990s.
Fight against the transient
However, Mario Lefebvre is no nostalgic. He doesn't know exactly how, but the industry will get back on its feet. “The only thing that really worries me about the future is that artists have received much less engagement from their fans over the last decade or so. It's normal that Bono no longer excites audiences as much as before, but it's not normal that no group has replaced U2 in terms of popularity. “Taylor Swift is currently the exception that proves the rule,” he states.
It must be said that it is difficult for new artists to develop a sense of belonging in the current context. “In the past, promoting an album could take a year or two thanks to radio samples. If the album is released on the platforms today and the enthusiasm lasts for three or four weeks, it will be great,” explains Mario Lefebvre, who was honored in the National Assembly last fall.
The former impresario continues to closely follow all music releases around the world. But last year he was sadly forced to give up work after being diagnosed with incurable bone marrow cancer. “Until last year I drove in the left lane at 140 km/h. It was hard to stop. I'm 65 years old, but in my head I'm still 18 years old,” he admits, looking calmly into the future.
The next Celine
Behind him, the walls of his office are decorated with a wealth of gold and platinum records. In particular that of Roch Voisine, of which he was managing director for several years. “There are three great mysteries of life: the Sainte-Madeleine campsite, the caramel in Caramilk and why Roch Voisine didn’t make it internationally,” he always jokes.
Garou was also one of his adversaries in the early 2000s, when he was number two at Productions Feeling, the company run by his long-time friend René Angélil. Eight years after the death of Celine Dion's Pygmalion, Mario Lefebvre says he still thinks about him every day.
“René was a great unifier. He was someone who had a clear vision and could express it well so that everyone was moving in the same direction. For this reason, he achieved what no one in Quebec had managed to do before and what no one has managed since. Apart from that, he had on his hands the hardest working artist I have known in my life,” he recalls.
Will we one day see a Quebec singer reach the same heights as Celine Dion? “If it happens, it will be with Charlotte Cardin,” says Mario Lefebvre, who advised the latter on the release of her first album.
“She has everything it takes to get there. She has the looks, the voice, the style… What she offers artistically is found nowhere else on the planet,” he emphasizes.