![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Formidable” and songs like “Tous les Mêmes” - which is told from the perspective of a woman tired of the dating scene - illuminate Stromae’s gifts as a character-oriented storyteller, but are ultimately isolated moments on Racine carreé. It’s a bittersweet moment made all the more potent by the deep bass drums and string swells begging listeners to dance. The song’s hook plays on the phonetic similarities between the French words “formidable” (wonderful) and “fort minable” (pathetic), with the latter also leaning on his character’s implied inability to have children. Yes, this man is swaying through the street and harassing different people - a single woman, a married man, a child - about their understandings of love, but his projections come from a place of real hurt. But his writing is too empathic to be passed off as mere camp. For the video, he played the character, stumbling around in front of confused commuters and police officers at the Louise train station in Brussels. On “Formidable,” a single from his 2013 sophomore album Racine carreé (French for Square Root), the Belgian singer-rapper-producer depicts a man who gets shitfaced in the throes of a breakup. Stromae has always been drawn to the idea of embodying characters in his songs.
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