Christophe and his «wild success» with girls

Jonas Follonier - Thursday melodies

With its Crazy success reworked with Nusky & Vaati and heralding his new album of duets, French singer Christophe, a septuagenarian of unjustifiable elegance, embarks on self-tuned hip-hop-electro. And, surprisingly, we like it. We like it a lot.

He's instantly recognizable by his mane of slicked-back blond hair, his round, blue-tinted sunglasses, his unmistakable pout and his ever-worried, sensitive yet authoritative air. The «beau bizzare» has left his mark on the French musical landscape Blue words, presented his Puppets and is still bidding farewell to its Little girl in the sun. Daniel Bevilacqua, better known as Christophe, is a legend.

But sometimes legends die out, either through the death of their inspiration, or through death altogether. And the average person would have plenty to worry about, given the state of Christophe's artistic choices. For several albums now, the Italian-born artist has been developing experimental music infused with electro and indefinable things. The resulting French chanson is the only one currently constantly renewing itself. The singer-songwriter's raw, childlike, high-pitched voice remains. Devastating.

In fact, when you make the effort to look closely at the sound research that characterizes Christophe's long-standing approach, you're forced to bow. Ocean of love, from the album Vestiges of chaos (2016), is representative of a mature artist who has understood where the sounds that work today lie. And he makes them his own, integrating them into his sensitive universe of lyrics and words, while remaining in the very special vein of rock he cherishes.

And so we find this bizarre mix in a delivery that is unlikely to thrill the young ladies of our century. But wouldn't it be precisely brilliant if Christophe didn't give a damn about what people think? Crazy success with a hip-hop twist is this:

«Le charme, c'est vraiment tout», as the song goes. Yes, and it's because Christophe has charm that he really is everything... everything you need to escape for a moment into a cheesy, delicious musical ether. No?

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

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