Thunder clap in The Voice All Stars. From the start of the new stage, that of cross-battles, the first episode of which was broadcast on Saturday, the TF1 telecrochet saw two of the big favorites of this anniversary edition leave. Al. Hy and Olympe successively bowed to Flo Malley and Dominique Magloire, two other strong contenders for the final victory. Their fate was sealed by the 101 people present in the audience and responsible for deciding each duel.
Al.Hy and Olympe accepted, for 20 minutes, to come back to this disappointment and to tell how their return to the game, ten and nine years after their first respective participations, was or not beneficial. Cross-interview.
How did you react when you discovered the talents you were going to face during this “cross battle”?
Al.Hy: I was a little sad, because I like Flo a lot. He was in the first season with me. I had seen his rehearsals and loved what he was going to do. I thought he deserved to stay. It’s complicated, what … We, the artists, are not players. We want to do beautiful things and be together, art is made to bring people together. There, in the context of the show, there is something that is not …
Olympe: Which is not natural.
Al.Hy: Yes, in any case, for us artists. Namely to show off by bringing someone down.
Olympe: I had cited Dominique Magloire in the list of people against whom I did not want to fall. In fact, I’m still a little happy to have been eliminated against her. Even though everyone else is talented, she is an artist that I had seen performing before. She was in the Roger Louret company of the Tube Years by Jean-Pierre Foucault, I saw her in [les spectacles musicaux] Cleopatra, in Gone with the wind. She made me shiver long before I met her in The Voice… She and I have a lot of affection for each other, even though we don’t know each other very well. We were not in battle mode. I admit that I was stressed because I had had crazy bronchitis for two weeks just before. I was not at ease.
You were eliminated one after the other. Did you see each other backstage afterwards? What did you say to yourself?
Olympe: We were between spite and relief. Al. Hy, I don’t know if you felt the same…
Al.Hy: In fact, I knew from going through quite a few things like this – stuff that didn’t go as planned – that it was going to give me energy in a short time. There was something about me that made me feel confident. I was like “Great, I’m going to have a lot to talk about! “
Olympe: I admit I was shocked to see her go – although I love Flo Malley. I saw Al. Hy in rehearsal and told her she was going to win The Voice All Stars because she electrified the set. When she was taken out, all of the stress I had before going on stage suddenly fell. Zazie looked at me in “You are going to pass” mode. And I looked back at him saying, “Come on, let’s get it over with!” (Laughs). And, to be honest, after Al. Hy was eliminated, there was a little hiatus, because Jenifer [la coach d’Al. Hy] was in shock too. I then went backstage and sent a message to Julien, my husband, saying “Al. Hy has just been eliminated, see you in ten minutes, I’m sure to get out.” And now, it happened like that, I had a presentiment of it. At the same time, it’s complicated to get only 101 people to vote… It was a weird experience, just talking about it, I have the stress that comes back.
Al.Hy: What you have to say to yourself is that it’s a matter of the moment. If it’s the people who vote on the set, that’s it. Is that it was not my moment and that does not mean that there will not be other opportunities. Who cares, what. It’s something that is happening and we can see it as something that has transformed us and that will give us energy.
Olympe: It’s clear and I think that for us, it was necessary in the sense that it gave us a boost.
What motivated you to agree to participate in this “All Stars” edition?
Al.Hy: I wanted a kick in the butt! Well, I got it (bursts out laughing).
Olympe: I was in a period when I no longer knew what I wanted to do. I needed to digest everything that had happened since my first participation in 2013 because I went through albums, tours, projects and, at one point, it came back down. The Voice All Stars was a little light at the end of the tunnel. We had the chance to be put back on the front of the stage, we shouldn’t miss it and do things well.
Al.Hy: During these ten years, I had time to develop myself. When you’re very young, you don’t necessarily know what you want to say, what you want to be there for, in the music industry. I was able to write and work a lot. Now I know why I want to be there. It doesn’t sound like much like that, but it’s essential to know why you want to sing.
Did you feel things moving after your blind auditions aired in September?
Al. Hy: What was pretty crazy was that right after my audition aired, Alphabetical rose in the Top albums for a few days. It was crazy ! And then I signed very recently with the label Jo & Co [le label d’Hoshi, de Claudio Capéo…] for an album of songs of my own, so it allowed me to develop a lot of stuff.
Olympe: Congratulations! I’m so happy for you! (He marks a beat) For my part, I released my EP, Taxidi, at the beginning of September and it also climbed to the Top. The broadcast generated quite a few views on YouTube – I find it a bit complicated to do it on this platform, it gave a boost. I had a lot of new followers on the networks, more comments, interactions… I was also contacted for two multi-artist projects, I had requests for concerts. We will see later what will happen but just the first show helped me a lot.
The blind auditions and the “cross battles” were recorded at the end of 2020. Did the wait until the broadcast give rise to apprehensions, hopes?
Olympe: What is hard, already, is that we do not see our services. We don’t know what it was like, how we looked, or if we sang well or not. Even if the coaches turn around, we always have a critical aspect of what we have done. The most difficult, therefore, was to discover the images at the same time as everyone on TV. It disturbed me a bit.
Al.Hy: I think in every failure there is an opportunity. Obviously, there is a small period of digestion which is essential …
Olympe: It’s clear…
Al.Hy: Our brains, us humans, are programmed to survive, so when something doesn’t go well, we can find extra energy to get up.
Olympe: It’s a bit like heartache. You are disappointed at first, you wonder why …
Al.Hy: And then you find a better guy! (laughs)
Olympe: (He laughs too) And then you learn to live with it and you tell yourself that it doesn’t matter that other things are going to happen. Me, it is clearly thanks to my elimination that I created my label and wrote my EP. I started with a logic of writing, of composition, so that people finally hear the music that suited me. Before, I was not given a choice. The title Strong, released in May, I wrote it following my departure from all stars. At first I thought I was never going to get over it and it was horrible …
Al.Hy: I really find that, in recent years, we no longer see this kind of program as a competition. I think no candidate from The Voice does come to win a trophy. Rather, the reward is finding love in people who will follow you afterwards as well.
Olympe: That’s it, it’s the meeting with the public.
Al.Hy: And that is a gift that we have, whether we stay on the show or not.