Stromae – Formidable

Moins formidable que la dernière chanson.

[Video][Website]
[6.14]Daisy Le Merrer: Stromae starts to take the Brel comparisons seriously. Which is really too bad, because instead of bringing some chanson into his dance music, here he brings some electro squiggles to something that’s really a pitiful excuse for a chanson réaliste. He just doesn’t have the maturity to sing this  and relies on a few Brel-like vocal tics that sound more like parody than homage, and peppers them over a lyrical conceit that’s really too slight for this genre.
[4]

Iain Mew: I thought the chorus was “You were great, I was great, we were great”. Turns out on consulting a translation that I’d missed a slight switch and the middle line is something more like “I was hopeless.” Which just highlights more starkly the drunken regret and self-recrimination that was already breaking through the language barrier loud and clear thanks to Stromae’s expressive and affecting performance.
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Anthony Easton: I will go back to listening to Gainsbourg. I know then that the sleaze is legitimate, and everyone knows what to expect. The crying over the twinkling piano has to be sarcasm, but what worries me is that it just might not be.
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Scott Mildenhall: Another unreliable narrator, seeing the world clearly through misty eyes. “Papaoutai” you could dance to; this is just outright miserable, lurching and climactic even before it reaches its end, at no point offering any hope of a resolution, and even for someone whose French isn’t quite strong enough not to rely on the subtitles in the video, pretty compelling, if not all that easy going.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Stromae follows up his absentee-father rager “Papaoutai” with this broken-down break-up tale, the bad vibes continuing as if he’s on a mission to run the listener through as many wringers as possible. And the unburdening process remains musically effective in bursts, with busily percolating percussion bedding a slowly swinging piano line. The melodrama that was already evident on “Papaoutai” is beginning to drag, however, with the artist resorting to play acting wine-streaked sobs at the song’s close. It doesn’t go down well.
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John Seroff: Overwrought pop flamenco more burnished than strained, “Formidable” wisely restrains the supporting music and leaves the heavy lifting to Stromae’s traumatized and phlegmy lamentation. I love how the quaver in his voice naturally and honestly deteriorates to open sobbing. This is Pagliacciesque melodrama done right.
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Brad Shoup: Eh, it’s hard for actors to play drunk, too. But I could mumble the chorus if I ended up in a Brussels bar, and I got to give it up for someone who won’t just let the song cry.
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