My love, that Slimane will perform at Eurovision 2024, was revealed this Wednesday evening. It is a ballad which requires great vocal technique and which builds emotion to a crescendo. A few minutes after the first broadcast of the song on France 2’s “20 Heures”, the author, composer and performer who will defend the French chances, agreed to tell 20 minutes the history of this title and its creation.
What is the starting point of “My Love”?
The starting point is a broken heart, it’s the desire for your loved one to hear you more than anything. There was an alignment of the planets. We started talking about Eurovision last year. I was on tour, in Geneva [Suisse], which is a somewhat special city in my personal history (he smiles). I was with Yaacov and Meihr Salah, the guys I write most of my songs with. We started to design it. I really wrote it as a love letter, that’s the right term. Once we finished the song, I thought back to our discussions about the competition and I said to myself that I have to sing it at Eurovision, that as many people as possible hear it, that I with her, I manage to speak to people’s hearts.
Was it easy to write or did you rework the text several times?
It came out like a cry from the heart, like something that needed to be expressed. It was very instinctive, animalistic, almost. This broken heart, I didn’t hide it since I wrote a record [Chroniques d’un Cupidon] talking about this story. This song came later. At that moment, this thought came to me: “I made a whole album that talks about that and still today I love you and I still don’t know why. I rewatch all the films in the world and it’s always the same: I love you.” That’s the story of this song.
You told Anne-Sophie Lapix that it was one of the most complicated songs you have composed for yourself. What are these difficulties?
Vocally, it’s the most difficult. Moreover, in the video which was broadcast on France 2 and then posted online, I sing live. It’s not a studio take or something that we interspersed, it’s a “real” take, as if I had sung it in concert. I was scared before singing it. It’s a mountain. There are songs like that where, vocally, we know that we have to be in good shape physically and mentally. It demands a lot technically and emotionally. I use several registers, I go from head voice to full voice to slightly saturated voices and I need all my abilities to sing it.
So you will always have apprehension before interpreting it?
This song won’t scare me but I think it will give me enough jitters and adrenaline to push myself. It’s the kind of song that I like to perform because I have to give everything to sing it and that allows me not to get into something redundant in terms of emotion. It’s not “normal” for me to sing this song, it’s something that transcends me.
Is this the song you will perform on Friday at the NRJ Music Awards?
No. I would perform a medley but My love will not be part of it.