Isa

Les jours heureux
Imagine
De couleurs vives
Ce que tu es dans ma vie
Tout là-haut
Il faut qu’on se donne
Exister
À perte de rue
Comme tu voudras
Avec son frère
Le jardin des larmes (feat. Till Lindemann)
Le chant des grives
Et le reste

Three years after the platinum album “Effet Miroir”, Zaz is release her 5th album. A record she began making during the spring 2020 lockdown. A period that really shook up the singer. "I needed to be more calm, to almost withdraw. This isn’t at all what I’ve done these last ten years; it’s a paradox”, laughs the singer with 5 million albums sold around the world, who never stopped racing around the planet since the dazzling success of her first album in 2010, propelled by the global hit “Je veux”.

After a frenzied decade of sold-out concerts, awards and prestigious collaborations (Quincy Jones, Charles Aznavour, Kelly Clarkson…), it was after her last world tour which ended in the United States that Zaz refocused herself. Quietly. “I have another breadth of understanding. It's a new cycle. I finally understand my adult side”, says the artist. « What I have experienced over the past few years has been super nourishing. Everything was new. I even exported my Zazimut festival to Russia! I have experimented thoroughly, excessively moreover. It's my nature."

But at some point I wished that Zaz would die. Zaz, the public figure, the performer, the stage name had taken all the space, leaving little room for ‘Isa’. And since I had spent 10 years projecting energy all around me and all over the world, it was a different journey this time dedicated to inner self that I had to begin. So it made sense that this album should be called ... "Isa"! (as the short for Isabelle, her real name).

For this full-length album, Zaz worked with Dutch producer REYN. This pianist and film music composer invited the artist to his chapel-studio in the Netherlands. Zaz also recorded several songs at home, thanks to her new home studio, at ICP studio Brussels with an orchestra and in Southern France in Provence. She chronicled the making-of the record on a Youtube serie, ‘Le Journal d’Isa’.

Zaz also continues her vocal work - begun in "Effet Miroir" - that’s more nuanced and restrained.

She dreams of a "kinder world than this", in the song "Imagine" , unveiled as a prelude at the end of summer. “I tried to let my voice live. I have a tendency to force it, to go into something pretty hard. Sometimes, my voice gets messed up. Now, I let my voice do its thing. I try to breathe better. To be less rushed. That's really what I’m all about”, Zaz laughs.“Imagine a world in tune with you”, advises Zaz in the first single. “When you see the state the world is in, it saddens me. What are we going to leave for our children?", asks the artist, who has always held deeply ingrained questions of education and ecology. “It's sad, scary. But ‘Imagine’ is a song of hope", she explains, putting things into perspective.

There are a whole bunch of citizens actually doing things", Zaz concludes “If we’re true to ourselves and build something that makes us happy and fulfilled, it’ll project onto the world. »