Additional Information
Six years and one pandemic after presenting her last album, Pascale Picard is back with a vengeance with her catchy new album Bigger Kids, Bigger Problems, released on Friday April 4. It features ten songs that are just in time for spring, filled with sunshine and wind in the face. Country-folk, funky bass, bluesy tones at times… a beautiful feeling of freedom and self-affirmation emanates from the work. The hope of keeping emotion alive, the desire for emancipation, the need to denounce and the grace of letting go. While the extracts Jaded , Your Jacket and Bigger Kids, Bigger Problems have already been on tour for a few months, with their respective videos by the female duo Agrume Agrume, we take a look at the collaborations, inspirations and upcoming projects of Pascale, who is also releasing her first novel this year – La note de passage.
PAN M 360: You’ve just unveiled Your Jacket, your second sweet-spring single after Jaded. It’s really a song filled with light! Where did the inspiration come from?
Pascale Picard: I set myself the challenge of composing a happy love song, without being afraid that it would be cheesy. Often, my first drafts of songs, the first ideas, are very simple and catchy, and then I start thinking, I add new chord progressions and often, that ends up killing the magic. For Your Jacket , I chose to keep things light and stay with the same three chords throughout. The text is about the birth of a relationship between two people, when you feel there’s something there but you’re still groping.
PAN M 360: The album was produced by your accomplice and bassist Alexandre Lapointe. How did you come up with the album’s identity together?
Pascale Picard: Alex and I had crossed paths several times and we had lots of friends in common, but we didn’t know each other very well before we started working on the album. I let him hear my songs in a guitar-vocals version and then we listened to music for 2 days, talking about the influences to be given to each of them.
PAN M 360: What did you want to explore and share this time, through these ten new songs?
Pascale Picard: I wanted to talk about the questions and observations we make halfway through our journey, when we feel we’ve achieved most of our goals. Taking a moment to see if we’re happy where we are and reaffirming, or not, what we want to do next.
PAN M 360: Would you say that the long pauses/incubation periods between your albums are necessary settling periods in your creative process?
Pascale Picard: To feel like composing and writing songs, I need to feel that I’ve had experiences and that I have things to say.
PAN M 360: Do you generally compose more musically or vocally?
Pascale Picard: I almost always start with the melody of the voice. It can also come from the guitar, the piano, sometimes just in my head without an instrument. And the melody often carries an intention or an emotion that inspires me to write the theme of the song and the lyrics.
PAN M 360: You talk about life evolving and changing, and about the ability to let go, with chapters ending and pages turning. Would you say there was a need to let go on this album? To let go?
Pascal Picard: Probably, yes. I did it at my own pace, because I wanted to, without any pressure. I had fun throughout the whole process, everything was done naturally and simply, and I think you can hear that.
PAN M 360: You worked with Charline Clavier and Daphnée Pageau from Agrume Agrume for the music videos for each of the excerpts, was it a favorite?
Pascale Picard: What a revelation! I already knew a little about their work thanks to social networks, but the collaboration was super fluid, natural and human. They’re a great gang from Quebec City, and I have no choice but to say that I often have a positive a priori about working with women. The music world I knew 20 years ago was very male-dominated, and opportunities to work with women were rarer. It’s good to see things changing for the better.
PAN M 360: How would you say your relationship with music has evolved over the course of your career?
Pascale Picard: Music has always been a need and a passion for me. In my early twenties, it became the way to pay the bills, and I realized that it was sometimes harder to maintain my love for it when I was “forced to make it”. Several times I found other ways to pay the bills, because I know that when I take a break, the music always comes back.
PAN M 360: In 2025, you added a new skill to your career with the publication of your first fiction novel. How did this new project come about?
Pascale Picard: It was born out of a desire to create in a way other than songwriting. During the break imposed at the start of the pandemic, I imposed on myself the discipline of writing every day from 9am to 4pm for 1 month, without having any clear objective in mind. At the end of this period, I had a nice jumble of around 35,000 words: it was the first draft of my novel.
PAN M 360: A new album means a new tour. Are you looking forward to hitting the Quebec stages again, a pandemic and six years since The Beauty We’ve Found?
Pascale Picard: We put the show together two weeks ago with the band who will be going out on the road with me, and I’m really looking forward to meeting the public so well surrounded. The album’s producer, Alex Lapointe, is in charge of the show’s musical direction and will be playing bass. Marie-Pierre Bellefeuille (keyboards and backing vocals), who has been playing with me since 2018, Kenton Mail (drums) and Endrick Tremblay (guitar) will complete the band. Endrick will also be opening for us with songs from his Endrick and The Sandwiches project.
