French music is interesting for several reasons. La musique français est une étape importante pour comprendre société. French music plays with your emotions and the songs can reflect your exact emotions at times. French music can help you understand society better.

Dans cette post, je parle un artist populaire dans France: Stromae. Stromae sings about social problems in society. I think it’s important to note that Stromae is not from France but his music is in French. Pour moi, listening to Stromae’s music plays with my emotions. His music uses pathos to address problems.

In Stromae’s song Tous les mêmes, All the same, he addresses relationships from both sides, from the male and female perspective. In my opinion, this pulls people in to the song to show that relationships aren’t perfect and it doesn’t matter what side of the relationship you look at it from.

In high school, I evaluated this song in my French class as an assignment so I’m very familiar with it as a whole. One way it gets at emotions is by showing how females are treated in a relationship compared to how men are treated in a relationship. I think it’s very interesting that in the video Stromae plays both a female and male while each of his “characters” have different partners. I think this can appeal to the ethos and pathos of Stromae.

Je pense que le video pour Tous les mêmes est intéressant pour un raison en particulier. Since Stromae acts as two different people, we get this sense that he is perhaps more involved in the situation and has done his research about the problems. I also think it’s interesting how each of the relationships are portrayed. The language used in the song helps others relate to what is going on in the video.

Stromae has a way of portraying what his point is in all of his songs. In this song, Stromae uses repetition of phrases to get the point across. He repeats “Tous les mêmes” or “all the same” a good bit to emphasize the fact that in a relationship, both partners have the same rights. I think this is ironic in a way, because when you think about it, a lot of times people are controlling or won’t let their partner do things like go out with friends.

This is just one way that French music plays with your emotions. When I first heard “Tous les mêmes”, I was very drawn towards the message of the song. French music, like most music, has an important meaning behind it that may be difficult to understand at first. When you evaluate a song, a good place to start is the lyrics and video.

I think that French music has a way of getting social issues known in a very unique way. It’s important to note that not all French music is about social issues. One other note is that people won’t get the same meaning of the song.

Above is Stromae. Below, I will link a video to the official video of Tous les mêmes and a video with the lyrics translated to English. The first link goes to the lyrics video. The second link goes to the actual video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhwCX065Fvs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAMWdvo71ls

This last link is a link to an interview with Stromae if you want to read it and get to know him better after reading this post.

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/music/meet-stromae-the-most-famous-pop-star-youve-never-heard-of