Do you have to be a couple to celebrate Valentine's Day?
The temptation to answer no is strong, after listening to
Boyfriend
, a new piece by Étienne Daho released on February 14.
This song seems to say that love is a personal feeling, which involves only one person: the one who calls himself in love.
Extracted from the singer's next album,
Tirer la nuit sur les étoiles
(which is scheduled for release in the coming months, probably around the middle of spring), it revolves around this crazy idea that the feeling of love wins over you for no reason, galvanizes you so much that it makes you take on in turn a multitude of roles necessary to love the other.
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"I'll be your friend, I'll be your boyfriend too," sings Daho, implicitly stating one of the new love codes of the time, which consists of playing with the vagueness of relationships, on the edge of the border between friendship and couple, the friendly relationship and the exclusive relationship.
The song declines these contradictions, assuming them and staging them like a theater of possibilities: “I will play all the men in your life, whom I will embody at will”.
Boyfriend
, released on Valentine's Day, is thus listened to like a declaration of love to a loved one - who is not present, but regardless of his presence, this is the feeling here solitary that counts first, as well as the dynamic that emerges from it and allows the lover who expresses his feelings to be able to take on all the possible roles in order to exist with the loved one.
Read alsoÉtienne Daho: "We become someone by building ourselves with everything that we missed"
The Lonely Lovers' Hymn
“Love does not exist, only proofs of love count”: this affirmation, enacted by Jean Cocteau in the dialogues he wrote for the film
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
seems to underlie the text that Daho sings .
Its words, its thrilling rhythm, its "captivating" velocity, say that the lover is ready for anything, ready to let himself be invaded by this love, let himself be dissolved by it.
One thinks implicitly of the declarations of amorous dependence that were songs like
I Wanna Be Your Dog
by the Stooges, the group of Iggy Pop or
I'll Be Your Mirror
by the Velvet Underground - totemic songs for Daho and which say that one can lose oneself totally in the feeling of love, like in a drug.
Its words, its thrilling rhythm, its "captivating" velocity, say that the lover is ready for anything, ready to let himself be overwhelmed by this love.
We also think of
Amoureux solitaires
, this hit by Lio, adapted from a song by Elli and Jacno, old accomplices of Daho.
Boyfriend
can be heard like a negative of this last song.
To the "tell me that you love me" from
Lonely Lovers
, Daho replies, "I'll be close by / keeping my distance well / your most violent poison / your son of joy, your white star".
As if the feeling of love, according to Daho, could exist alone.
To true solitary lovers, those who give their love without expecting anything in return, Étienne Daho has just offered the most beautiful hit there is.
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