“
I have to listen to my limits
”, writes Stromae on Tuesday: we thought he had left
Hell
, this burn-out translated into a seven-year stage break, but the Belgian singer canceled his tour until the end of May.
"
I must resign myself to the fact that my health unfortunately does not allow me to continue to come to meet you for the moment
," he said in a press release.
"
I share this news with you with great regret and deep sadness, but I have to listen to my limits
".
"Surrounded by my family, I have to take the time to recover to resume, when I can, the rest of the concerts (...) Take good care of yourself", concludes
the 38-year-old artist.
In the best case, we would find him on June 1 in Brussels, for a tour which must end in the same city on December 9, after passages in France and the Netherlands.
Like a bad chorus.
Wracked by an XXL world tour in the wake of the tudesque album
Racine Carrée
(2013), Stromae had first thrown in the towel at the end of 2015, undermined by a depression aggravated by the side effects of an antimalarial.
The one who is among the most listened to French-speaking artists in the world was finally back on stage in 2022, to present
Multitude
.
Disc which had allowed him to win a 6th and a 7th Victoires de la Musique (awarded in France) in his career.
Read alsoVictoires de la musique 2023: Stromae at the top of the nominations
Unbeaten
Undefeated
, the opening track – on record and on stage – seemed to attest to his return to form and a newfound ambition.
But
Hell
is back.
To say that he had created the event with this piece by revealing it in a sequence staged in the 8:00 p.m. newspaper of TF1 on a Sunday evening in early 2022.
"
As a result, I sometimes had suicidal thoughts / I'm not very proud of it / We sometimes believe that it's the only way to silence them / These thoughts that make me live in hell", we hear in
this piece with strong autobiographical overtones.
He never made a secret of the problems encountered during his ascent.
"Even if we sell dreams, it's still a job and, like in any job, when you work too much, you end up with a burnout", he conceded in 2018 in an interview with France 2
.
In the TF1 8 p.m. newspaper, Stromae had confided that working on clips for others in recent years - Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa or OrelSan, among others - had "really done him good"
because
"
the attention
” was then
“no longer focused”
on him.
The return to the spotlight was harder than expected.
Go Peanut
Everything seemed crystal clear for Paul Van Haver, for civil status, which has become a reference for young artists like his compatriot Pierre de Maere or the Frenchwoman Zaho de Sagazan (both roll the "r" like him and like Jacques Brel before) .
Born in the suburbs of Brussels to a Flemish mother and a Rwandan father, left home very early and killed during the genocide, he discovered teenage rap.
He made his debut there, then composed for mainstream artists, such as Anggun, before turning to the Eurodance of the 90s, of which Belgium is one of the melting pots.
In 2010, his first album under the name of Stromae contains the hit, "
Alors on danse"
, an evocation of people who dance to forget the crisis, their despair and death.
The title loops in nightclubs, becomes the hit of the summer and is even remixed by Kanye West.
A few months later, the public discovers a singular artist, between Brel, Arno and Kraftwerk, on the stage of the Trans Musicales de Rennes.
“My fear is not to stay normal.
The day I take myself seriously, that's when I'll start to go peanuts
, “he said at the time of the success of the dazzling
Formidable
or
Papaoutai
.