\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019d been commissioned to do the score for a French film, M\u00e8res et Filles [released with the English title The Hidden Diary, 2009], starring Catherine Deneuve. I\u2019ve done quite a few scores and usually you talk to the director, then it\u2019s your job to help the storyline do what it needs to. There\u2019s a scene at the end of the film where the main character leaves a letter under the door, which to me suggested the title Je te laisserai des mots, meaning: \u201cI will leave you some words.\u201d<\/p>\n
In my studio in Montreal, I came up with what I thought was a nice little melody. I\u2019m from Quebec, so although I\u2019m an English-speaking person, I\u2019ve always been surrounded by French. Whenever I have the opportunity to sing or write in French, I do. Although I like singing in French, it\u2019s a very difficult language to sing in because of the vowel structure. There aren\u2019t many words in Je te laisserai des mots and the first verse is entirely wordless. I didn\u2019t think it needed any more words so I just made vocal sounds. Also I probably imagined the song starting to play at the end of the film while there is still dialogue, so didn\u2019t want words to clash. We were kind of half-drunk when we did the strings arrangement. It was a really fun night \u2013 but outside the film, I didn\u2019t think anyone would ever listen to the song.<\/p>\n
I might be renting skis and they\u2019ll see my name and go: \u201cOh, you have the same name as the singer.\u201d I say: \u201cIt\u2019s me!\u201d<\/p>\n
It initially appeared as a bonus track on my debut album. Then it suddenly took off in the pandemic. Because I couldn\u2019t tour, I was doing lots of live Instagrams, which prompted someone to send me a video they\u2019d made of Je te laisserai des mots. It had a million views and once those algorithms get going, you can\u2019t stop them. Sometimes certain emotions hit at a certain time and a song can become the soundtrack of that moment. Before I knew it, people all over the world were making their own lockdown videos featuring Je te laisserai des mots.<\/p>\n
When I first came into the music business, execs didn\u2019t take me seriously because I didn\u2019t have \u201cradio songs\u201d, but the advent of syncs and then streaming have made a new kind of hit possible. The song\u2019s now had something like 200,000 TikTok videos featuring it, more than 60bn TikTok plays and it\u2019s the first French language song to hit more than a billion streams on Spotify. I find such huge numbers hard to digest but the song is much more famous than I am. I might be renting skis or something and they\u2019ll see the name and go: \u201cOh, you have the same name as the singer.\u201d I\u2019m like: \u201cIt\u2019s me!\u201d And they don\u2019t believe me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Our string quartet played with Patrick for 15 years and we\u2019re still close. When we started touring with him, our kids were quite young so Patrick named us Mommies on the Run. We were his first experiment with a string quartet but after a while on tour we were wilder than him. We\u2019d shout: \u201cNo kids!\u201d<\/p>\n
It was such a great adventure and we all spent a lot of time together. We\u2019d go to Patrick\u2019s place, there would be things everywhere and you\u2019d put your violin case on the ping-pong table. Patrick would play on the piano and we\u2019d improvise around that. One night Patrick said: \u201cI have a French song. What do you think of my accent?\u201d He speaks French very well but had never sung in it and there were a lot of mistakes in the pronunciation, but they were part of the charm so he kept them in.<\/p>\n
It was a fun session and at one point we had some Jameson whiskey. We tried for a long time to find the right notes and got a little drunk. Everything was starting to slide when suddenly it all just fell into place. There\u2019s almost no rhythm to Je te laisserai des mots, which again is part of the charm. It\u2019s a beautiful song that makes your heart melt, and during the pandemic, when we were all very lonely, it touched a lot of people\u2019s hearts. I first became aware that it was taking off when my kids were on TikTok and I heard the song. I went: \u201cThat\u2019s my quartet!\u201d They couldn\u2019t believe it. They told me: \u201cThat song\u2019s everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Patrick isn\u2019t obliged to give us songwriting royalties, every year he gives us a symbolic amount to show his gratitude, which is really nice and shows that he respects the fact that people pulling together in that moment created something special.<\/p>\n
Patrick Watson\u2019s new album, Uh Oh, is released in the UK on 26 September. He plays the Troxy, London, on 7 November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patrick Watson, singer, songwriter, piano I\u2019d been commissioned to do the score for a French film, M\u00e8res et Filles [released with the English title The Hidden Diary, 2009], starring Catherine Deneuve. I\u2019ve done quite a few scores and usually you talk to the director, then it\u2019s your job to help the storyline do what it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[5333,956,6546,6542,70,6545,2419,6547,207,6544,5647,6541,6543],"class_list":{"0":"post-12870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-covid","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-des","11":"tag-hearts","12":"tag-hit","13":"tag-laisserai","14":"tag-lot","15":"tag-mots","16":"tag-patrick","17":"tag-recordbreaker","18":"tag-spotify","19":"tag-touched","20":"tag-watson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}