Into Stromae’s Metaverse
A Belgian artist elevates how I think about art
Artists like Stromae helped me realize that your deepest meditations can still light up the dancefloor if you know what you’re doing.
Stromae’s songs sound massive. They’re meant to pound through stadiums, arenas, and dance floors. His epic production is balanced out by lyrics you can sink your teeth into, and they easily stand on their own even without his music videos and spectacle-filled performances.
Like Lady Gaga, Stromae extends his artistry beyond music to fashion and audio-visual production. Moesart is like Gaga’s Haus Laboratories and has produced several clothing lines as well music videos (including one for Billie Eilish early in her career). Also like Gaga, Stromae indulges in lavish music videos with high-level concepts, choreography, and costuming.
But Stromae sets himself apart from his peer artists in several distinct ways. Most superficially, he looks like no other artist of his era. He’s a six-foot-three Belgian-Rwandan man with long, lanky limbs. His massive beats fuse seamlessly with his songs which read like conversations a Parisian screenwriter might compose. Understanding French isn’t necessary to understand his songs. His baritone inflections are expressive enough to convey feeling across the formidable French-to-English language barrier.
Duality is a constant theme across his music and performances. He mixes African and European culture, explores gender, the interplay between good and evil, the banal and the transcendent. The tumultuous places where all those things intersect are where Stromae likes to play: He takes on the role of a man and a woman having a lover’s spat in Tous Le Memes. He sings about the strange power of dance as a therapy for life’s banal problems in Alors En Danse and wonders when cancer will come for him in Quand C’est.
His bandmates present as mild-mannered Belgians* in bowler hats and sweaters. As they play for packed arenas, they look to me like they’re more likely to go home to smoke pipes and read leather-bound books than anything else.
Stromae made an attempt to crack the American market, but it left him with little to show for it except a series of awkward interviews. Ten years ago, when I discovered him, Americans just didn’t listen to non-English music. I tried in vain to bring friends to his 2015 show at Echostage in DC.
But since then, waves of K-pop and Latin Music have flooded American radio stations and playlists with non-English songs. Maybe when Stromae puts out another album, the English-speaking world will finally be ready to listen.
*Yes, I am aware his band members aren’t all Belgians
