Having sold four million albums in the Francophonie, Lynda Lemay has released his thirteenth album, INJURED in fifteen-year career. Generous and spontaneous, Lynda Lemay answers some naive questions arising during the listening of his new songs.
Your songs are like no other. 18 tracks on this album , and not a single tune! Which end do you take a song at the time of writing it? The lyrics first? The music, the title, one image? Lemar - It's different for each song. If I'm on the plane, which is often the case these days (my moments of solitude are rare, while on the plane, I would go into my bubble to be created), these are the words that come first because I do not have my guitar. But I write anyway always a rhythm in my head, so despite the lack of instrument, the rhythmic part of the song is accurate at the same time as writing the text. And inspiration, I do not force it, there is overflow of emotions, or not. And I do not plan to write about a particular topic, I let myself be surprised by the stories come to me. Sometimes, I am reminded of a piece of conversation I had with a spectator after one of my concerts, and wham, the emotion rises and the song was born. Sometimes it's something more personal that would concern me for a while.
" Wounded and ready to take him under his wing all the other wounded as she " do you sing in Wounded . Your theme is the everyday, through the prism female. Like a Renaud that millions of young French people have seen as an ideal big brother, would you be to your audience's neck sine q uébécoise, the one with whom one likes to reassure or well see themselves in her songs? Are you aware that this proximity you able to create with the public? - Yes, I am conscious and increasingly, as the touching confidence that I get from my audiences are becoming more numerous. I get even, from time to time, shocking secrets that seem to be said for the first time and it is me who decides to offer these revelations. It's quite disturbing to feel that strength of songs that make fall and break taboos certain silences, he created a real bond between the woman I am and people who listen to me, a real relationship confidence. People must feel that my love for them is true, they detect, I guess, honesty in my lyrics.
You have the art of telling stories, putting a paw s very personal that give them an undeniable originality. Your songs "serious" in the end seem very fatalistic. In Standing on dandelion ts , great little scenario, you say: " In my little brain / I'm already all infidel / It f'sait long as I had not felt so good / J'm'entends tell you: "Sorry, there are children who call me." "... This "sorry" will ring there as an inability to reverse the tide? - Of course, in this story, we feel a great tear in the woman who loves a man who is not one who shares his life, a man she loves knowing that this love, if lived openly, extinct (in fact, is his fear), yet a man who (we learn at the end of the song) has given him a child, which she has expressed to anyone! What dark secret! She is a woman who lives a lie, which has obviously made a lot of bad choices, but loves his children so much to accept to live trapped in a life where she can never fully develop, finally, is what she thinks. This song might be a happier future (when she understood that when she found the courage to live in truth and transparency, it could possibly be a better mother again)! Everything is possible in life!
"A happier future," another song, which would result ... The script lent itself. Have you ever thought to follow up some of your songs, which is low in variety, but often at the cinema. A sequel to green shoes for example. - Yes, it happened to me to want to make a sequel to a story I had written. In fact, it was not exactly a sequel, but the same story for a different angle. It was on my album
MY SIGNATURE with these two versions of
Marguerite. After writing the first, Margaret
Your name, I wanted to go further and it was there that I'm
Marguerite. But it's a good idea to repeat the experiment, providing further some of my stories already written ... We'll see if I can!
Female homosexuality was a topic that you had not previously explored. I met with Mary (which reminds the Girls alone , title song of your repertoire), you evoke the later discovery by a woman of forty years. Far from the militant songs, even demagogic that exist on this subject, yours recalls the difficulty of " spit mo rceau . When you approach a subject like one, you replay the songs gr andes directory to see what was for example the angle adopted? (Here one thinks of As they say Aznavour, but also Lomer Richard Desjardins Monocle and stiff collar Juliet, Between her and me of Valentines. ..) - Ah! I confess that apart
As they say, I do not know the songs mentioned above (I'll hasten to go buy it right after this interview, it intrigues me)! So as you can see, no, when I write, I rarely inspires songs already written. I'd be too afraid to repeat what I have heard that I liked and hit. The fact of not knowing too many songs helps me to think that I approach a theme that had not been approached in this way and this idea is very inspiring! So I prefer to know before after that maybe I was wrong! I met Mary
was written very spontaneously, remembering all those women who had given me pointed out that I did not speak of it in my songs. It only took one day off
to Vancouver for the words come.
The humor is one of your trademarks. In Blackberries, you mention " tastes weird pregnant women - and one thinks forcémen t Knocked Renaud. Then you come back with Twin , on a more Solenn el, a theme which, to my knowledge, had never been raised in song: the twins. How this song, where you push too far your sense of observation, was she born? - Once again, thanks to two daughters of the public (twins) who came to see me after a concert at me noting that I had never written about it (several ideas for songs
me this CD come from the public and that is why I call this album "Album of the public"). What really inspired me, however, when writing the song, is my relationship with my younger sister Diane. We have an extraordinary complicity which must be able to recall what possible link between twin-twin or soulmate. This, I would say, "fusion". One can not imagine living without each other. If Diane was not there, I really feel lost much of myself. We live by proxy the joys and sorrows of each other, sometimes more intensely than the other. It even becomes hard to live for our spouses, to feel no complicity in love can not compete with a blood relationship and love as hard. Is all that I expressed in
Twin .
" J'sors my son's cue / J'tends the mantle J'lui situates ch'veux / Pis hear the school bus " do you sing in It was worth millions and millions of mothers to navigate. You have the art of image sketched in three or four verses which gives a stamp to your songs very wooded, very "brèlien. Which songwriters do you admire most ? - One of my big heart strokes of the hour: Alexandre Poulin, a young singer-songwriter Quebec. His second album coming out soon! When he will be on the market, I suggest you run out and buy and listen, in particular, the song writer
. It is simply magnificent. Otherwise, several great authors inspired me. Of course, Brel is one of them! Also Aznavour, Serge Lama ... The wonderful authors who have written for Reggiani and Renaud also (see, all French except for Alexander!?). But surely you know that one of the first authors who guided me in my writing when I was at the very early twenties, Francis Lalanne, which I discovered a few songs by a songwriter Quebec appointed Alain Quessy. Overnight, my writing has changed. I realized we could get a lot of freedom in the writing of songs. He taught me to use words surprising that those not accustomed to hear in song. He also taught me to adopt a language close to people, poetry accessible built with words every day, which directly affects the heart.
With I love you more, you demonstrate that all issues can be addressed when we know his choice of words here to treat a subject a priori unsingable: disease, and the fear it arouses, the love she e strengthens. Test yourself to close your songs as did Georges Brassens with some friends, or do you decide alone and lonely fate of your songs? - Yes, I have my first audience, my family, who guides me in my choice of songs. I trust my parents, my sisters, my best friends too (including my editor Gerard Davoust) because they rarely make mistakes! But as the first plays are often on the phone, sometimes I have to give the songs a second chance, because the sound is not always at its best and it can influence the opinion of the listener! For example, when I sang I love you mom again, she did not really understand, so did not really like. And I was disappointed because it's one of my favorites on
INJURED , but after hearing it "live", my mother finally loved. However, it is true that this song can be interpreted in various ways and several have asked me what it really meant in my head. It can be confusing. Some think the woman cheats on her husband's story, others that it not mistaken in thinking she is still in love with his ex. Some do not understand that, indeed, in the end, it passes away without having had time to review the man she loved "to death".
Farce ear, which could have been included without a blush on the famous 33 towers bawdy songs or libertine Colette Renard, succeeds A mother might have sung Berthe Silva ... With this sequence, you demonstrate once again be the singer of the large gap. In general, what makes you laugh? What are your favorite comedians? - I laugh easily. If there is anything funny, then I laugh because it feels strange that there's anything funny. I laugh even when it is not the time. So when I did not really want to laugh, well, I am concerned and I know it's time for me to correct the situation, I change something in my life. I am very sensitive and if the laughter is there to dramatize what is not always rosy, I lose my balance. It's the same thing in my shows. It's all in color or very "black and white," as the cover and the booklet
INJURED. The person who makes me laugh the most is Diana, my almost twin! If it were not for his hilarious way of seeing the world and talk about how his or hilarious to make fun of herself or what she sees in the people around her or on TV I never developed a sense of humor which I show on stage! When we were small, she was the comic and I the spectator. When I write a funny song, I imagine she is telling me describe a situation! I put myself in his skin and I get funny ... She is my idol! Otherwise, I like several Quebec comedians like Martin Matte (one of our best!) and Louis-José Houde. And among actors, I always crack the humor of Jack Black. And on the Internet (and show), I am a fan since his debut by Jon Lajoie!
What is striking about your songs is the quality, say the same style of interpretation, even in your speech, remarkable. Vo us sing to the old, like Trenet, Greco, and Yves Montand Vaucaire Cora, songs that reflect our times. These great old Music Hall are they part of the singers that you listen to? - I can not say that I time to listen to a lot of music ... So, no, they are not part of what I listen to (currently, in my car where I listen to some music, I have four CD
: Alexandre Poulin, Nicola Ciccone, Iron Maiden - the new album - Sum 41 ...). In terms of my pronunciation, it probably comes from singers I listened to when I was little: Aznavour, Johnny, Lama, Dassin, Sardou ...
& B. L. Lemay Vignol on the plateau of La Chance aux Chansons, in 1999. Apart Alexandre Poulin Quebec singers what advice would you give priority to discover? - Bernard Adamus (for originality) and Nicola Ciccone (particularly for his song The immigrant's last album).
How you sign up in the "battle" of your great seniors, Félix Leclerc, Gilles Vigneaut, Robert Charlebois, for an independent Quebec? Any song in your repertoire not pronounce clearly on this subject. Is it still a hot topic today in Quebec? - I know a little politics. So I do not want to give my opinion song (I 'm too uninformed) about the fate of Quebec in Canada (or outside of Canada). Yes, this theme is still valid, but say that for several years, the wind of change is blowing definitely not strong enough to convince Quebec to anyone for anything ... From my side, I expect to "know what I mean" before venturing into such a delicate subject for writing. All I can say is that I am very proud to be a Quebecer and you can hear in my song
Blue!
In my country there is a spring more beautiful than any other
In my country, strings in the wind, there is plenty of children who skip
Y winters longer than the summers are green In my country, the summers die in the mountains of colors [...] In my
countries, there is a flag that does not stop blooming It is so blue, it is so beautiful that no one can make us blush [...]
In my country we speak French with beads anglicisms In my country, yes, English swept us with delight You appeared in France in 1996-97, preceded by a flood of praise from the media in Paris, the same people who once you successfully installed and your Victory Music (female singer of the year in 2003), you have seemed disdain. This thirteenth album, which ranked 3rd in the Top sales at its output, is accompanied by very good reviews, Olivier House in Marianne, Sophie Delassein in Le Nouvel Observateur , Veronica Mortaigne in The World ... What do you think that this press is, say intellectual, flatters your work again? - Of course, what is said of my albums or my shows in the media do not leave me indifferent, I'm always happy when I feel that my songs are appreciated by those who criticize my albums. To be quite frank, I had not felt in France, there had been criticism of how hurtful my albums after 2003. No doubt the people who worked with me in no hurry to tell me about these articles or reviews that! I'd say it's mostly in Quebec that I could feel (the part of some journalists only) a certain disdain, some willingness to convince as many people "do not love me "(Lol)! But I really do not see in what I read or hear about them, "constructive criticism" that could influence me to do things differently. I always do my best to deliver real emotion in my songs, but I do not calculate anything, I'm still working in the spontaneity, but also in attention to detail, the right image, the one key. When my own songs make me vibrate, I tell myself that people who like my writing style will be affected in the same way I am ...
Barbara ( My greatest love story ), but Renaud ( Small
), Diane Dufresne ( Thank ), etc., have dedicated a song to their audience. You conclude INJURED with Between Heaven specially addressed your fans, where you talk about these incredible signings that you give them after each concert, and can last for hours ... - Yes, I eat a lot of those moments often too short, but intense emotion, as are the moments I share with people in the audience after the shows. Briefly, one can say a lot. Often, even not need words and we told each other everything. I'm lucky to have an audience as generous and loving. I am a privileged artist, a woman filled!
(maintenance Baptist Vignol)
