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Cardin is the hottest Québécois artist right now across Canada. And that’s very cool.
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Charlotte Cardin looked pretty pleased Sunday night at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax as she accepted the Juno Award for album of the year for her sophomore set, 99 Nights. And of course well should she be pleased.
But at first she didn’t seem super excited.
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“Making this album with my friends was one of the great joys of my life,” said Cardin. “And we made it at a moment where I desperately needed a creative outlet and a safe space to tell these stories and share them. So I want to dedicate this to my friends, who made the album with me.”
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Then she listed of some of the people she needed to thank, again standard-issue awards-show stuff. But right at the end, it was as if Cardin suddenly realized the import of what just happened and the she shouted, pumping the Juno hardware up in the air with much energy: “Album of the year baby!”
Yeah baby! That would be a win for album of the year, one of the most prestigious awards of the night, along with another one for pop album of the year. This comes two years after she won four Junos for her debut long-player Phoenix, winning in 2022 for artist of the year, single of the year (for Meaningless), pop album of the year and album of the year.
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Not too shabby all round. In fact, it seems fair to say following the big wins at the Junos this weekend that Cardin, who now lives in Paris, is the hottest Québécois artist right at this moment across Canada. And that’s very cool.
Her career is also booming ici.
She headlined 13 sold-out gigs at the 2,000-capacity MTelus in 2022, then she performed for some 35,000 fans over four nights at Place Bell in Laval in February of this year. She also belted out the Canadian national anthem at the NBA All-Star game in Indianapolis last month, though she did get some flak for not including any French in her version of O Canada.
Cardin sings mostly in the language of Eilish, though her most recent release is a four-song mini-album, Une semaine à Paris, and it’s mostly in the language of Gainsbourg, including a duet with the French rapper Laylow and a franco version of her infectious hit Confetti.
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But though she doesn’t sing that much en français, there’s something very franco Montréal about her oeuvre. She channels Amy Winehouse, Adele and, yes, Billie Eilish, but there’s something different about the vibe and it’s undoubtedly partly due to her cool hometown.
The other thing that sets Cardin apart from the cookie-cutter chart-toppers today is her evocative straight-from-the-heart lyrics. Confetti is the perfect example. It’s an ultra-catchy electronic pop number but the chorus is: “I feel like a zombie, I’ll die at the party/Yeah, you’ll find my body fully covered in confetti.”
Or Sad Girl, one of the singles from Phoenix: “I gotta tell you all my best songs/I wrote the week you left/I got an album from this f–ing mess.” Then there’s Passive Aggressive. Let’s just say the title sums it up.
Yes there’s a little angst in the Cardin songbook.
Cardin actually began her career as a teenage model but when we spoke in the spring of 2021, on the eve of the release of Phoenix, she told me she never liked the modelling biz.
“But I wanted to be a musician and I wanted to do music,” said Cardin. “I have a lot of respect for models because it’s a really tricky industry. It’s really hard. It just really wasn’t for me.”
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Clearly Cardin is hitting her stride and I think the more she pushes the envelope musically and lyrically the better she’ll do. I saw the premiere of her run of shows at MTelus in 2022 and one of the most powerful moments for me was Faufile, one of her earliest songs, just because it was so original.
On Cardin’s Instagram account, she recently posted a video of her, Patrick Watson and Devon Portielge from super cool Montreal band Half Moon Run doing a gorgeous rendition of Watson’s beautiful song Melody Noir and it’s just perfect for her.
The more Charlotte Cardin can be the real Charlotte Cardin, the bigger she’ll be. It feels like this is just the beginning.
bkelly@postmedia.com
twitter.com/brendanshowbiz
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