When I was listening to this my girlfriend came to look at me to see if I maybe was sick. She wasn’t expecting me to listen to this. Is this so different from what I normally listen to? Maybe it is, but it is not easy for me to look at myself like that. For me it falls into the pattern of festival discoveries that I buy the records of.
Paul van Haver was born in Brussels in 1985. He started as a rapper in 2000, calling himself Opsmaestro. When in 2009 he broke through it was under a similar name: Stromae, an anagram of maestro. Musically Stromae is compared to Jacques Brel, but I don’t see that connection. It might be in the lyrics, but I usually don’t listen. It is certainly clean cut music, very much EDM mixed with singer-song writer.
This is his debut, known mostly for the smash hit Alors on danse.