Absurd, sad, crazy, touching, funny. It’s an album that fell on us without expecting it: This is not my body (otherwise I’d be dead) is the kind of unidentified object with which the world of song is sometimes equipped.
Oscar on vacation, with his pineapple head curled like Martin Lee Gore (Depeche Mode), reminds us of Eddy de Pretto as much as Philippe Katerine. Over subtly regressive urban pop and pastel choruses, the 29-year-old zazou can rhyme “Dalida” and “chinchilla” to evoke a painful romantic breakup: “ You were sad like Dalida/When she left/She left your arms/But not your life/You were curled up like a chinchilla. »
A song inspired by the story of a friend who, after breaking up with his girlfriend, found out that she had just moved in above his apartment with her new lover. “ Every day he saw their names in his mailbox next to it », Oscar told us during the holidays at the beginning of February, before going on stage at the Café de la danse.
A dozen songs later, the singer closes his first album with a pocket symphony about how the small hands of leisure society are doomed to remain on the sidelines of big romances. And if we laugh for the first time when listening to the title of Courtepaille, a tear is shed at the evocation of this waiter who believes he sees a Ferris wheel when he is barely a fan, when a customer tells him: ” thank you sir “.
The boy will spend his whole life waiting for him… But we will never go back to highway restaurants. ” Laughter gains its power by tapping into intimate wounds, the author continues. We’re just laughing at the drama. » If all his songs are autobiographical (with the exception of this one), we will not know the real identity of Oscar les vacances, the nickname adopted during the trip to Senegal.
Funny teenager
Polished nails, a pearl necklace and a suburban tracksuit, this son of a cosmetics entrepreneur, born under a Brazilian nationality through a strange administrative misunderstanding, grew up observing people wearing masks. ” My father made them for his company L’Action cosmetic and my mother was a clown in his company. It comes from the school of burlesque, bordering on the bubonic. I watched her a lot on tour and it had an effect on me. A clown will look for laughter in very deep emotions. »
For the multi-instrumentalist, who studied cartooning before turning to music, that influence can be felt in the clips he writes the scripts for. His Buster Keaton-like blandness reinforces the sense of melancholy emanating from the strange adolescent as an outsider.
He even wrote a song about his difference: “Hey, I was the last virgin/I lost the game to zero/My eyes popped like popcorn/I paid for a YouPorn worshop. » (Fleas.) « It is true that I had my first sexual relationship quite late, at the age of 19, admits the young artist without embarrassment. I found it useful to make a song about it: we feel less alone when we talk about a topic considered secret or taboo. Acknowledging things helps give them a normal life. We help you recognize things about yourself. »
Elsewhere he says: “ Mom, you got the era wrong/I was supposed to be born in 2062/Dad’s still in shock/I have pink flamingos in my eyes. » (Pink flamingos.) And yet here we are in 2024 and we’re happy to know that UFOs exist.