It’s not common for electronic music to be accompanied by lyrics that go beyond trivial matters, but it’s even more complicated to mix dancefloor anthems with mental health or the loss of a father.
It’s not common to reappear, after a few years away from the spotlight, on France’s highest-rated prime time news and, in the middle of the interview, start singing L’enfer, a song about depression and suicidal thoughts.
It’s not common, but all of this is exactly what defines Stromae.
The Beginnings: From Paul to Stromae
Paul van Haver spent his childhood in Laeken, a neighborhood that perfectly reflects Brussels’ multiculturalism. Those years would prove decisive in his career, allowing him to soak up diverse genres: from Congolese rumba or Colombian salsa to American funk and soul. The anecdote of young Paul and his mother attending a free James Brown concert in Brussels in 1995, when he was just ten years old, is well-known.
He soon became interested in music: first with drum lessons and then with a growing passion for rap, a genre then rapidly expanding in French-speaking countries.
That’s where his name originated. A common practice in 90s French rap was to use verlan, a slang that simply involves inverting the order of a word’s syllables. OPSmaestro was his first alias, but he found it too pretentious, so he dropped the OPS and verlanized what remained: Maestro became Stromae. A simple change of order.
His beginnings in rap were not easy. He composed with a childhood friend, produced, recorded music videos… but success didn’t come. It was, nevertheless, a key stage in his learning: there, his DIY philosophy was forged, to the point of rejecting the label of rapper in his own lyrics, choosing to simply consider himself a musician.
From YouTube to Stardom
Just as Justin Bieber’s mother managed to promote her son from the platform, Stromae used it just a couple of years later to show how he was building his first album, Cheese.
The Leçons de Stromae gained traction, and it’s in leçon 8 where, already with an audience, he introduces Alors on danse to the world.
But it wasn’t YouTube alone that turned the track into a phenomenon. Stromae had no contact with the music industry and ended up working at NRJ, a music radio station. There, he showed his work to the programmers and convinced them to play it; the rest is history, an instant success worldwide.
Electro, Pop, and Melancholy
The triumph of Alors on danse overshadowed the interpretations that could be drawn from the lyrics of Cheese. The album title itself is a nod to that situation where one forces a smile for a photo, and even Alors on danse doesn’t have lighthearted lyrics: it invites dancing to forget debts, grief, or divorces.
It might seem, in reality, a simple excuse for the chorus, but it’s with the release of his second album, Racine carrée, that we confirm this less superficial reading is likely the correct one in his case.
Papaoutai, another dancefloor hit (this time with explicit lyrics about the absence of a father and a childhood without that figure), or Formidable, about the pain of a breakup and alcoholism, clearly reflect the more intimate side of the Belgian artist.
And it is in Formidable where his ability to evoke emotion outside of electronic music is appreciated, in a track closer to nouvelle chanson française than to any dance rhythm: a distance from electropop that would fully consolidate in his third album, Multitude.
From Stromae to Paul, and back again
During the African tour for Racine carrée in 2015, the artist took an anti-malaria medication that caused very severe side effects: severe insomnia, paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, and suicidal ideation.
That same year, he decided to stop, marry his partner, Coralie Barbier, and step away from the spotlight. During those years, Paul decided to put Stromae on hold. Three years later, he became a father and continued his life without public appearances, though he didn’t lock away his creativity: he continued producing for other artists and penned hits like «Tout va bien» with Orelsan.
In 2022, he reappeared with Multitude, a world music and redemption album in which L’enfer, the song with which we opened these lines, stands out.
Tracks like La solassitude, L’enfer itself, or Mauvaise journée underscore the difficult mental balance the artist has maintained since achieving fame. And yet, the album’s opening track (Invaincu) and closing track (Bonne journée) are luminous: they celebrate the strength of having been struck by an illness and overcoming it, as well as the good things in everyday life.
Multitude is, in my humble opinion, his most well-rounded album; not only for its lyrics, but also for being the most stylistically varied, with rhythms close to Latin America in Santé or African and Japanese influences in the aforementioned Invaincu and Bonne journée.
The tour started with very positive reviews, but as the months passed, Paul once again told Stromae to stop: dozens of concerts canceled and a discreet public profile since 2023. Only in 2024 did he reappear, with «Ma meilleure ennemie», a duet with Pomme for the Arcane soundtrack.
No Time for Sadness, Come on Singer, Begin
Every story that invites us to think about mental health is more than welcome. Stromae’s case is also curious: an artist who achieved great success on the dancefloors, transformed over the years into an elegant blend of Édith Piaf, Manu Chao, and Residente, without abandoning his electropop and rap roots or his life story.
We tend to depersonalize public figures, be they artists or athletes, but media exposure can profoundly affect anyone, and particularly those who achieve fame at a young age.
So let’s remember Rubén Blades in El cantante and support anyone who might need help, regardless of media exposure, because in some way, we are all singers in our lives, but also just ordinary humans.
And no one asks
If I suffer or if I cry
If I have a sorrow
That hurts very deeplyI am the singer
Because my thing is to sing
And the public pays
To be able to hear meI, I am the singer
Very popular everywhere
But when the show ends
I am just an ordinary humanRubén Blades – El Cantante