Although you've already noticed this by reading the above, I say: I love Stromae. It is curious, so far I have not publicly expressed my devotion to it, although I have had opportunities to do so, because in recent years I have been asked for cultural recommendations from the media three or four times.

Why have I never mentioned it? I have a suspicion that, since he is a famous musician, very famous, I think that it seemed to me that people would already know him – people know him – and I think he has a duty to talk about artists of meritorious merit that are not so famous when petitions of this kind arrive: someone has believed that it is worth knowing what he recommends and something new will have to be discovered, because, at least, the people you say. That unconscious belief has guided me so far.

What happens is that I've come up with a new opportunity to write about culture, and like so far, I want to tell you what I like about Stromae. The excuse is that the star of the joyful melancholy will pull a new record after a long pause.

First to dance

It's the spring of 2010. I don't know where you are, but I'm in the bars of Vitoria between the week and the bars of Elgoibar on weekends, and every time you put the song Alors on danse I start jumping. It's not common to reach the South, but this guy has quickly become a star. I am not in vain a translation student and my second surprise is the letter apart from the refrain, confirmed by the video: an agitated critique of the routine life of a medium-sized European worker in white shirt.

As a first work you can see the seeds of two fundamental characteristics of the home brand: combining the salazones of life with the sweet dance and taking great care of the public presentation of music – videos, aesthetics, performances in the media. The song has spread all
over the world. This is one of those cases where the expression meteorological success does not seem to be completely exaggerated. Paul Van Haver, known as Stromae, is 25 years old.

Own square roots

It will not take long to publish your second album: In 2013 you will see the light Racine Carrée, the album of consecration. The first single, another rhythmic hymn: Papaoutai.

I have finished the studies, the first brick on the long road to act as an adult person I still do not, and in that song I have found the first undisputed brick that will make me build the admiration for Stromae, the phrase: “Tout le monde sait comment on fait des bébés, mais personne sait comment on fait des popes”. I mean, it's not the same to make kids as being a parent.

In addition to what that song suggests, little by little I get biographical data. Van Haver has a Belgian mother, a Rwandan father. He grew up with his mother, his last name, and four other brothers, in Brussels, and at the age of twelve he learns that his father has been killed in the genocide in Rwanda, which really happened three years before receiving the news. Gaztedani has been interested in music and before starting to record videos about the production of YouTube, the starting point of the Stromae project, he has participated in a rap group.

In foams

The songs following the first single increase the shadow. Leading the musical lists of different European countries, long and multitudinous concert tours, the conquest of the omnipotent market of the United States.

Home brand fans have not been disappointed with Racine Carrée, quite the opposite: always creating dancing melodies, Bâtard offers a vision as critical and ironic as interesting of identity, while Carmen denounces the dangerous mechanisms of social networks, in addition to the Bizet opera version, and is a great tribute to singer Cesarea Evora Cabover Detave. Among others.

Video clip or street action?

It is not the only example, but Formidable – the second single, published just after Papaoutai – perfectly shows what has been said about the careful public presentation of music.

The song is about a man who has been drunk from nostalgia after breaking his relationship with his partner and who, in addition to explaining his story, Stroma has done it on the street and in the video clip. (For me, in particular, the second brick of devotion to Stromae).

He moves one morning to the centre of Brussels, near the tram station, pretending to be drinking. Not far from there, a camera records everything in secret. Stromae is swinging between the people of the week, sits on the edge of his platform, as the fines of 600 to 3,000 euros try to prevent it; the area’s neighbors have taken the phone to the Gaitero to photograph, who know who it is. The police have also approached, to see if it's OK, to see if you want them to take you home, you know who it is.

Those of you who are watching Stromae on the drunkenness floor this gray spring morning don't know that the musician wants to talk to us about the acidity of contemporary heartbreak. One day he stands up, retires to empty neighborhoods and smiles to the cámara.En the first
three days of his release, three million people have seen the video, another record.

Cracks. Discontinuity.

A lot of things don't happen suddenly. Already in 2014, just a year after the release of his second album, the artist has expressed in an interview his desire to stay a while in his career. He wants to remake his normal life. I find that understandable. Surely it is not possible.

Soon after he travels to America (USA, Brazil), Asia, Africa.

To quantify the successes: over two hundred concerts, one million viewers.

The situation explodes on the African tour, in the spring of 2015, after taking a drug against malaria suffers physical and mental discomfort and returns to Belgium as a matter of urgency. The gravity of the issue is obvious, but the artist returns to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to close his tour in October of the same year. It's a special concert for him, we could imagine him and he confirmed it: he's very happy and very excited to be in his father's hometown.

True silence comes after the cancellation of the “debt”.

Stromae comes back, joke!

Don't think I followed all of this in milestones, in real time, as I told you, not at all. I had my own affairs and jobs. But once I went to Google, I was going to be on the lap of the 2016-2017 course, and I was giving a lot of myself. From then on, yes, from then on I have been attentive to the adventures of the musician.

The news comes in a drip. It's producing music from other artists. He has created a clothing item with stylist Coralie Barbier and art director Luc Junior Tam, sealed by MOSAERT. That he has offered an interview on the excuse of this last project and that he has talked about the psychological problems and burn-out of recent years, with wife Barbier and his brother Tam aside.

It is noticeable that things have changed and look good.

And one day, in the very long torrent of the pandemic, about to end 2021, I get a message with a link to a video: Santé Stroma launches a new song. Next to the dance beat, once again, the reflection is that those who support and enable our celebrations – cleaners, waiters, carers – do not have the opportunity to celebrate it.

Looking to the future: Multitudes

Stromae's return has expanded rapidly with radio interviews, television interviews. One of them is taken advantage of by the singer to open a new song: the simple and beautiful L’enfer who talks about depression and anxiety. (Although I am not going to go into the subject further, I should like to mention that the presentation of the song in the informative of the 20 informations of the French public chain TF1 has sparked a debate in the sense that something like this has more to do with marketing than with the media’s objective).

Going back to the main thread, and as for what's coming, Crowd, Stromae's third album, will come out on March 4 and then spin around different countries, this and 2023. This summer, on July 8, he will play in Euskal Herria, in Kobetamendi, Bilbao.

As for the album, the artist has pointed out that he has searched and worked for different rhythms, trying to reflect the lot of people who inhabit it. The two singles that have come so far suggest, however, that they will retain the qualities that we have so far liked: both pain and satisfaction that make up human life.