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 title of Stromae and Pomme is a hit: “My best enemy” is the most listened to French-speaking song in 24 hours in the entire history of Spotify
The piano-vocal song saw renewed interest in 2019 on YouTube in a video combining the melody with archive footage.
The melancholy anthem was then 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 now the soundtrack to people’s home movies,” Watson told the Canadian daily Globe and Mail in 2022, speaking 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.
