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Corneille looks in the rearview mirror. At the beginning of the year, the singer offered the public a new version of his hit “Avec classe” shared with Aya Nakamura. And it was a success since the song was certified platinum and has more than 40 million streams on Spotify alone. There is a sound and a style Aya Nakamura, the language she uses, the form of what she does and also assume what she represents as a person. And even it is beyond music, her success has exceeded the strictly artistic framework. She symbolizes a hope for all young girls, not only black ones ” confided to our microphone the Canadian artist who, today, returns to the story of his other hit “Parce qu’on vient de loin” for the new episode of the podcast “Face A” by Purecharts. If everyone hummed the cult refrain when it was released in 2003, few understood that it is in fact a very personal text for the singer, born in Germany before living in Rwanda, where his family was murdered during the Tutsi genocide in 1994.
A “brutal” success for Crow
Having survived the tragedy, Corneille left to build his life in Montreal. I observed many young people my age who came from Rwanda, who were separated from their parents, and who had become adults much too quickly. Me included. At 12, I did not imagine myself at 20 being completely independent, autonomous, able to count only on myself to provide for my needs. ” he adds to our microphone. Hence the first words: ” We are our own fathers, so young and yet so old “. As for the famous ” shallow ” punctuating the chorus, it came to the singer quite quickly, who says he wrote the song in one day.” Not sad at all ” by giving birth to “Parce qu’on vient de loin”, Corneille realizes today that he started from an observation to end up singing ” an ideal » : « It’s probably the hardest thing to do, is to live each day as if it were your last. (…) Many people thought that I was sharing a philosophy of life that was mine but no, in fact, it was a hope ».
“I had to end my career”
If he wanted to put his heart on the table with this song, Corneille is delighted that the public has made it their own: ” It’s extraordinary to talk about yourself and realize that you talk about others too. That’s where I find the usefulness in my job. “. And this is reflected in the figures: while the album of the same name sold more than 500,000 copies in France, the single “Parce qu’on vient de loin” was at 10th place in the charts and sold more than 750,000 copies at the time. A huge success that ” filled with humility “but he lives” abruptly » : « Until the summer of 2003, things were going really well, I had a gold record, hits: “Avec classe”, “Rêves de star”… Things were going really well, I was happy. (…) Since then, everything has been a hurricane of success, accolades, applause. I think I was in survival mode. It’s strange to say but success is something you survive. I was convinced that it would cure something but (…) it still left me with a big void. I had to take a break because it can be hard to handle ».
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Corneille therefore preferred ” stop everything » in 2005 after a Zénith tour and a burn-out: « I had to re-evaluate things, my relationship with success… I had to end my career “. Although he has never found such a huge success, he is nevertheless grateful to have in his repertoire a song as important as “Parce qu’on vient de loin”: ” It is the one that allows me today to live my career as I see fit, to live in a balanced way. It is like a great friend who has never left me and to whom I owe a lot. ».
