Powered by TikTok, the song “I will leave you words” by Quebecer Patrick Watson has become the first French-speaking song to exceed one billion plays on Spotify, the streaming platform announced on Tuesday. “There’s something dizzying about it,” Canadian songwriter Patrick Watson commented on Facebook on Wednesday. “It’s a huge number, almost impossible to comprehend.”
“I grew up in Montreal and am extremely proud that a French song has broken the language barrier,” continued Patrick Watson. The Quebec artist thus ranks ahead of other French-speaking artists with global influence, such as the Belgian Stromae or the Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura.
Patrick Watson, represented by the independent Montreal label Secret City Records, composed this song almost 15 years ago, for the film “Mères et Filles” with Catherine Deneuve released in 2009. The piano-voice song has experienced a resurgence in popularity. interest in 2019 on YouTube in a video combining the melody with archive images.
The melancholic anthem was later used to accompany scenes from everyday life in tens of thousands of videos on TikTok during the Covid-19 pandemic, with users adding melodrama to snippets of their everyday lives. Celebrities like Justin Bieber also helped make the song popular among a wide audience.
“The modern pop song is today the soundtrack to people’s home movies,” Watson told the Canadian daily “Globe and Mail” in 2022, talking about its viral popularity. “The modern hit is the song that makes your daily life more interesting and romantic” on social networks, he added.
“I will leave you words” was the most listened to French-language song worldwide on Spotify over the last twelve months, the platform announced in September, surpassing titles like “Parso on danse” by Stromae.
Patrick Watson’s Music has been used in the popular American series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Walking Dead”, and he and his eponymous band won the prestigious Canadian Polaris Music Prize in 2007.
