While the European public got to know him mainly through the album and its song À nous, released in March 2020 on the French label Tôt ou tard (a guarantee of top quality), a song that was perfectly in tune with the pandemic climate of the time, it was with Que tout s’danse, another hit that the author of these lines still listens to over and over again, that Preszow really put his stamp on contemporary French pop.
Of course, we sensed that this Belgian artist had something to say and knew how to say it, but the busy side of some of his pop orchestrations could, without him being too aware of it, alienate a public less fond of this type of arrangement.
Nevertheless, at the start of 2025, the young thirty-something released a double album featuring his best songs in stripped-down piano-vocal or piano-guitar versions, with the added bonus of the previously unreleased and highly successful Perdu le nord.
And it’s here that we see, without a shadow of a doubt, that we’re dealing with an old, flayed soul, some of whose songs are straight out of the tradition of the great chanson à texte, to which he winks here and there with references to Brel (Quand on n’a que l’amour) or Ferrat (Nuit et Brouillard). As in the superb “Preszow = [Prèchof]”, a poignant song that evokes his forebears with a number tattooed on their arm…
Die-hard fans will probably be delighted to rediscover strong tracks like L’intime & le monde in stripped-down versions, where the poetry really takes off, and the vocals are even more assertive and nuanced than on the dance version. Paradoxically, the same is true of the piano-vocal reworking of the masterly Que tout s’danse.
If the subject matter is generally one of introspection between the narrator and the world around him, and this in a slightly anarchistic way that would probably not displease a Damien Saez, or even a Mano Solo, Preszow will draw a smile of connivance from Dylan fans with the very beautiful Charlotte.
But it’s on the hard-hitting Comment fais-tu pour vivre? that this singer-songwriter stabs us with a life-saving knife, straight into the solar plexus. As Ferland used to say, if you listen to this, you’ll be bawling your eyes out. Because it’s magnificent.
