Faced with Nathalie Levy in the program “En Aparté” broadcast this April 15, 2025 on Canal+, Roch Voisine returned with frankness on the dizzying beginnings of his career. Roch Voisine: The first superstar in Canada The dazzling ascent of Roch Voisine took everyone short, including professional entourage. “We didn’t really know how to do it, had never happened to someone from home,” says the Quebec singer. Unlike France, which had the experience of stars like Johnny Hallyday, or in the United States accustomed to managing this type of phenomenon, the singer’s Canadian team found itself helpless in the face of the magnitude of its success. The singer describes this surreal moment when, three weeks after a concert broadcast simultaneously on television and radio on Radio-Canada, he looked at the screen without really recognizing himself. “I think that at some point, we may have good intelligent values, think, understand, but there is something that goes beyond us,” he explains with hindsight. Isolated for its own protection in the face of this overwhelming popularity, improvised security measures have had unexpected consequences on the artist’s daily life. As Nathalie Levy points out, her team did not have “the staff who goes with security to assume this success”. The solution found? Isolate it completely. “I was locked,” confirms Roch Voisine, forced to stay confined to his hotel room after each concert. “Yes, I spent a lot of years, a lot of months in a hotel room,” reveals the singer, now 62 years old. This period of forced isolation created a painful paradox: at the top of his glory, he was deprived of the simple pleasures enjoyed by those around him. “I think that people around me had more fun than I could have it. It was average. It was the difficult side. I was a lot, a lot, by default,” he recalls with a touch of bitterness. A great career for Roch Voisine despite the obstacles these difficulties now belong to the past for the Canadian artist, who pursues his career with passion. Currently on tour, he will perform on April 18 in Montreal and then on May 2 in Ottawa, after having had to postpone these concerts initially scheduled last year for health reasons. This tour marks a new chapter for those who paved the way for other Quebec artists on the international scene, such as Céline Dion. More than three decades after having won the public with “Hélène”, Roch Voisine continues to share his talent with his fans.
