Home » Posts tagged 'La Voix'

Tag Archives: La Voix

Ariane Moffatt – An “eavesdropping” short series: Moffatt-Tremblay – Post 1 of 3 (#150)

January 15, 2015 12:39 pm / Leave a comment

Much like the last three posts, I’d like to keep the same format for the next several posts (a 3-part mini blog-series, with the first two parts featuring two famous people, and the third part directing you to the audio website of L’Autre midi à la table d’à côté, where you can hear the conversation between the two famous individuals).   In this case, we’ll be focusing on Ariane Moffatt and Guylaine Tremblay.  With that, lets get into the first post of this next mini blog-series.

In any culture, there seems to be two types of singers & musicians who garner mass public attention.

There are those who are one-hit wonders (you know the type – they come out with a catchy tune, are overplayed on the radio for a few weeks or a couple months, and then people get sick of them and they disappear forever).

Then there are those other ones who consistently come out with high quality work, a major hit or album here and there over the years, and they always seem to be there in the background, making long-lasting contributions to a society’s music.  Eventually they become part of a society’s collective cultural identity.  Ariane Moffatt is one such singer.

She was born in 1978, and her career really took off in the early 2000’s with a hit album Aquanaute.  Over the last decade, she has released a number of other albums.  Her numerous Félix Awards – one of Québec’s highest music awards – and her platinum and gold albums attest to her popularity.

A couple posts ago, I mentioned that Charles Lafortune is a host of the hit television singing competition program La Voix (The Voice).  Likewise, Ariane Moffatt is a judge on La Voix (You don’t become a judge on a show like that unless you’ve made it, bigtime!).

When discussing singers or actors, it’s always tricky when trying to describe who might be a similar Anglophone Canadian equivalent.   Everyone is truly their own person, with their own style – so I hesitate to give comparisons for fear of overgeneralizing.  But if I had to pick a couple names, I would say that many of her songs have traits in common with the “softer” side of Alanis Morissette’s (and perhaps even the softer side of Ireland’s Sinead O’Connor).  But even with that, Moffatt definitely ventures into other genres, and usually remains loyal to heavy guitar tones to carry many of her songs.

In a couple posts from now we’ll be looking at the conversation Moffatt has with Guylaine Tremblay,  Therefore, I’ll quickly mention a bit about her personal life to set the scene for this later post.   Moffatt came out a couple of years ago on the wildly popular show Tout le monde en parle.   She has a spouse, and they’re raising their two children.  Much of the conversation with Tremblay will focus on this aspect of her life.

If you’re looking for some of her work, some of Ariane Moffatt’s better known songs include:

  • Je veux tout,
  • Réverbère,
  • Point de mire,
  • Mon Corps,
  • Imparfait,
  • Hasard,
  • Blanche,
  • La barricade.
  • Also, if you want to hear her interpret an Anglophone song in French, check out her interpretation of “Everybody Hurts”.

Ariane Moffatt’s official website is: www.arianemoffatt.com

Her music is for sale through various venues.  Please stick to official sites and do not pirate (our artists are part of our cultural fabric).

————————————————————

MINI “EAVESDROPPING” SERIES

Advertisement

Charles Lafortune – An “eavesdropping” short series: Roy-Lafortune – Post 2 of 3 (#148)

January 13, 2015 7:52 am / Leave a comment

This is the second in a 3-part mini-blog series (the first on Patrice Roy, this one on Charles Lafortune, and the next one on their one-on-one intimate conversation when they say down together for a meal on the radio program “L’Autre midi à la table d’à côté”.

Interesting factoid:  For several years running now (including this past year), studies have shown that people across Canada continue to remained glued to their television, and to television programs.  This comes despite an enormous uptick in the space the internet takes in the lives of people across the country.  For many under 40’s, television has simply moved from the box sitting in the corner of their living room, to the small screen sitting on their lap.

What has remained consistent these past years is the amount of time per week Québécois continue to watch television.  Québec watches more television per week than anywhere else in Canada (sometimes only an hour more than the next ranked province, but Québec continues to watch the most television nonetheless).  Canadians can expect to spend a quarter of their week, and a quarter of their lives watching television, and that is more true than ever in Québec (CRTC figures).

What this means is that Québec knows its television personalities very very well.  I could probably even go as far to say that they see and follow the lives of television personalities just as much (and dare I say perhaps even more) than certain family members.

Charles Lafortune :  One person who occupies a big place in some of Québec’s favorite television programs is Charles Lafortune.

My earliest memories of seeing Charles Lafortune come from when I was a teenager and he was an actor in the very popular former program Watatatow (an after-school youth TV show which could be considered Québec’s own equivalent of Anglophone Canada’s former iconic program “Degrassi Junior High”.  – On that point, I have friends who live on Degrassi Street in Toronto.  The first time I was invited to their home last fall, it came to me with “shock and horror” that there actually was NO high school, or any kind of school on Degrassi Street !!  I drove up and down the street twice, and nope… I couldn’t find the school!  I bet you 80% of Anglophone Canada would be just as surprised as I was 😉 ).

Lafortune has since appeared as the main figure in a good number of other very popular television programs with varying degrees of notoriety.   He has appeared in such a variety of programs that he has become an instantly recognizable personality anywhere in Québec and in other Francophone areas of Canada.

A few programs in particular are largely responsible for Lafortune’s high-level notoriety:

  • L’École des Fans (School of Fans) was an on-air children’s sing-along program on the TVA television network for 5 years in the 2000’s. You might ask “What’s the big deal about a children’s sing-along show?”   Well, this one came with a twist, which drew in adult viewership numbers by the drove…  The shows featured individual children singing their favorite pop-songs, but then had the actual music star join the child on stage, and sing with them.   Over the years, such large names as Celine Dion, Marjo, Lara Fabien, Garou, and Mitsou appeared on the show, singing hand-in-hand with the kids.
  • Le Cercle (The Circle) was a popular TVA network gameshow which ran for 6 years, which relied on rapid-fire responses from the players.
  • Catherine was a popular Radio-Canada sitcom which ran from 1999 to 2003.  Lafortune played the ex-boyfriend of the show’s main figure
  • La Voix: Just as Anglophone Canada and other countries often feature more than one popular singing talent show at any given time (example:  the “– Idol”, “ – Got Talent”, “The Voice –“ programs), so does Québec.  Since 2013, Charles Lafortune has been Québec’s host of TVA’s “La Voix” (The Voice) – which was adapted from the Dutch version of the same program.   Home viewer numbers of La Voix are huge in Québec; sometimes ranking among the largest TV viewership numbers in all of Canada – surpassing 2,500,000 viewers for certain episodes!!   (By any standards, those are large numbers of Québec eyes focused squarely on Lafortune!).

Apart from the above, Charles Lafortune has also been a popular radio host on CKOI Montréal (a very popular Montréal radio station), and has been a subject of superstar gossip tabloid magazines over the years.

The next post will give a bit of a summary of what thoughts were exchanged with Charles Lafortune met Patrice Roy.    See you soon!

————————————————————

MINI “EAVESDROPPING” SERIES