Stromae - Multitude (2022)

Paul Van Haver makes light, bouncy songs about heavy subjects. The Belgian-born, French-speaking singer and producer, known as Stromae, first caught waves in 2009 with “Alors On Danse,” a self-satirizing, electro-tinged track about someone who tries—and fails—to escape their problems on a dance floor. It became an international club hit and cemented Van Haver’s place as a modernist pop force, eager to slip sobering themes (debt, misogyny, racism, death) inside his fizzy bubblegum creations. On Multitude, his first new album in eight years, he continues to find inspiration in contradictions—darkness and light, joy and pain. “L’enfer,” or “Hell,” an early single that yo-yos from soft piano balladry to lunging, skittering bass, explores the artist’s struggles with mental health. “Sometimes I’ve had suicidal thoughts and I’m not proud of it,” he sings. “Sometimes you feel it’d be the only way to silence them.”