Étienne Coppée: crying for love and joy | The Press

Étienne Coppée releases his first album this Friday, where folk is soaked in gospel, where heartache leads to the splendor of friendship. On And we will cry together, melancholy and light come together.

Étienne Coppée may have been a gospel or soul performer in another life. This is his “esoteric” way of explaining the attraction he feels for these tones which “naturally” color his compositions.

“The pianist in me learned in a very self-taught way, says the one who took lessons that gave him his foundations for a few years. I ended up doing a bit more gospel chords and progressions naturally, but I can't explain it, it's just what sounds better in my head. »

This soul, this gospel, "the music that allows the most to indulge in emotion", is therefore found on this first album that he presents. Folk dominates, brought mainly by the piano, sometimes by the acoustic guitar. The mellotron adds the "magic" touch, while the choirs and harmonies carry in some pieces all the unifying emotion it wanted to instill.

These superimpositions of voices are especially present on the “B side” of the disc.

This album, I separated it into two sides, I thought of it as on vinyl. Side A is heartbreak, side B is not even me in the front anymore, I'm just part of a band with my friends and we all hear.

Etienne Coppee

We follow on And we will cry together the path traveled in recent years. “It's this great observation about friendship, about the fact that I feel very lucky to be surrounded by my friendly soul mates. This is why the album ends with this return to the comfort of friendship after the "heartache". A grief in which Coppée still sees light too (the record also begins on a note of hope). His other observation: “In a sentence, what is beautiful is that you have experienced love, he says. If you're in pain, it's because there was something beautiful. »

Become a singer-songwriter

His heartache — “I find this expression beautiful” — was the starting point for what is now the Étienne Coppée musical project. “It brought to light for me this need to write,” he says.

He was already composing instrumental music, his way "to get the bad guy out, to feel better". He has always been, in his group of friends and in his family, “the guy who sits at the piano”. Then, he met the author in him. “The first song I wrote for real [Autour de moi, sur l'album], it came out in 40 minutes at a time when I didn't think I was going to release a song, that I was going to put on an album. I had my ukulele, I was sad and the words came out, says Étienne Coppée. It was really 100% naive. »

The singer-songwriter then went to discover his pen at the École de la chanson de Granby for a year. "I had written two songs, it was necessary to propose two, so I sent 100% of my repertoire, he says, amused. I was taken ! »

That's when he realized that's what he wanted to do with his life. But it was two years later, at the singers' camp at the Festival de Petite-Vallée, that he said to himself that it was "perhaps really made for [him], this job."

In 2020, he released the mini-album The Indian Summer of Your Life. He then participated in the most recent Francouvertes, which he won. A first concrete experience of stage which forced him to form his group, to widen his proposal. “It was stressing me out to do it, but since I have a band, I'm happy! ".