But that was before. Because today, Patrick Watson achieved a feat on Spotify. His song “I will leave you words”, taken from the film’s soundtrack Mothers and daughters released in 2009, with Catherine Deneuve, has just made history on the platform by reaching one billion listens. It is the first song in French to succeed in reaching this milestone.
The person concerned is the first surprised by this unprecedented success as he expressed it on his Instagram page. “It’s something dizzying to try to imagine what a billion really represents. It’s a huge number, almost impossible to comprehend”he wrote. Dizzying, it is. “I will leave you words” is more listened to than the hits of the big names of the French-speaking Music industry such as Stromae, Aya Nakamura and Indila who is still a hit with her title “Dernière danse” released ten years ago.
His hit has exceeded one billion streams on Spotify, a first for a Belgian artist
Patrick Watson says he is honored to be a part of people’s musical lives. “People often write to me to tell me that we listen to this song in difficult times. I am happy that people give me this place in their lives because that is also the role that music plays in mine. “ There are 12 million who listen to Quebec songs every month on the Swedish streaming platform.
What explains the success of Patrick Watson’s song? Social networks! YouTube where it was used to illustrate nostalgic archive images, and above all, TikTok which then recovered it during the pandemic to make it a real viral phenomenon. Music accompanies countless videos that are intended to be moving. More than a million, according to estimates from the Canadian site cbc.ca. The latter also notes the fact that big names like Justin Bieber have boosted the song by using it on their account or in publications.
Note that if for many the Canadian singer is an unknown, he still already has a large fan base. There are 25 million people following him on Spotify where his other titles, mainly in English, also collect tens of millions of plays. This is the case for “Ode To Vivan- Rework” (65.5 million streams), “Lost With You” (60 million) and the original version of “Ode To Vivian” (52 million).
“I don’t want to be a celebrity. I hate it,” he once told Montreal Journal. It’s a failure my dear Watson…
