Stromae – Carmen
2015 · Directed by Sylvain Chomet
1.7M Likes
Best comments
1.“I don't think Stromae likes Twitter very much.”
More comments
- 2.“If Stromae thinks Twitter is bad, just wait until he finds out about TikTok.”
- 3.“Moral of the story: close your window.”
The story
Georges Bizet wrote Carmen in 1875, and its most famous aria, the Habanera, compares love to a wild bird that won't be tamed. A hundred and forty years later Stromae took that same tune and traded the bird for the little blue one living in your phone. The Belgian star wrote the new words with French rapper Orelsan, and Carmen became the sixth single from his album Racine carrée in March 2015.
For the video he went to Sylvain Chomet, the Oscar-nominated animator behind The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist. Chomet drew it by hand in his own style and served as lead animator himself. A tiny bluebird lands on Stromae's windowsill while he stares at his phone. Cute. Then it grows. And grows. Soon it's carrying him past a parade of celebrities – Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, even Queen Elizabeth II – and the birds feed them, one by one, to a giant blue bird. Their photos come out the other end. The final shot is a fresh little bird waiting at his sister's window.
It premiered on BuzzFeed and passed five million views in under a day, which is either the point or the punchline. The song went platinum in France. An opera about a love that ruins you, rewired as a cartoon about a feed that eats you alive.
