A song from 2010 is the most listened-to French-language track on Spotify. But who is the indie musician Patrick Watson behind the surprise hit?
ADVERTISEMENTWho? Patrick Watson is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has been successfully plugging away in the indie scene since his debut album ‘Waterproof9’ in 2001.
Is he any good? He’s since performed as the frontman of the Patrick Watson band, in which he won Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize for their second album, 2006’s ‘Close to Paradise’. He’s continued to release albums, putting out the band’s seventh, ‘Better in the Shade’, in 2022
Why are we talking about an early noughties musician? 45-year-old Watson has been thrust back into the spotlight for his 2010 track ‘Je te laisserai des mots’ (literally: ‘I will leave notes for you’, a soft piano-led ballad was composed by Watson for the film Mères et Filles. The 2009 film by Julie Lopes-Curval, known as Hidden Diary in English and starring Catherine Deneuve, didn’t make a massive splash at the time. However, Watson’s song has since gone viral.
How did it go viral? It first started in 2019 when the atmospheric piano ditty was included in a YouTube nostalgia compilation. Since then, it’s had successive viral boosts thanks to being shared across TikTok and by stars including Justin Bieber.
TikTok is at it again? The TikTok effect can’t be understated. Thanks to the way songs can be shared across the social media platform, ‘Je te laisserai des mots’ has become the first French-language song to hit a billion streams on Spotify. By Spotify metrics, this small piano soundtrack song from a lesser-known Quebecois artist is one of the most popular French-language songs in history.
Who has Watson overtaken? Prior to Watson’s viral success, the most streamed French artist was French-Malian pop singer Aya Nakamura. She was the most listened-to French artist in the world and the only woman to feature in the country’s top 20 best selling albums of 2023.
How has Watson reacted? Watson posted a response to the news on social media: “It’s an incredible thing to try to imagine what a billion actually means. It’s an enormous number that’s difficult to comprehend.” Discussing the significance of the song being in French, he added: “To make it more incredible, the song is in French. I grew up in Montreal and I’m incredibly proud that a French song has crossed these boundaries. I spoke French since I was young. It’s an incredible language, it has an incredible musical history and I feel very humbled to be a part of it.”
So, Watson is a Canadian hero now? Certainly for the French-speaking Quebecois region. Watson is now one of a few Canadian artists who’ve racked up over a billion streams for a song, including Bieber, Daniel Caesar, the Weeknd, Nelly Furtado, Drake, Tate McRae, Alessia Cara and Shawn Mendes. Chapeau, l’artiste!
