Pierre Lapointe

Striking the perfect balance between impeccable craftsmanship and flamboyant irreverence, Pierre Lapointe has enjoyed a long and fruitful reign as Quebec’s foremost 21st-century art-pop romantic. Born in 1981 in the town of Alma and raised in Gatineau, Lapointe was a multidisciplinary maverick with roots in theater and plastic-art design, before focusing his creative energies into a musical career defined by chameleonic aesthetic shifts and a dramatic, darkly humorous approach to matters of the heart that suggests a franco-pop Morrissey. With his name-making second album, 2006’s La Forêt des mal-aimés, Lapointe retrofitted classic chanson styles into a funhouse-mirrored melange of sweeping orchestration, baroque arrangements, and gritty indie energy. The record hit No. 1 in Quebec, a feat Lapointe would repeat with the carnivalesque crazy quilt of 2013’s Punkt (longlisted for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize) and 2017’s elegantly low-key La science du coeur. But no matter what style Lapointe tries on, the results are unmistakably him: In 2020, he even refashioned the traditional Christmas album in his own eccentric image, highlighting the absurdities and awkward moments of the holiday season on a set of wintry originals spiked with glammy panache, including a duet with kindred pop spirit MIKA on “Six heures d’avion nous séparent.”