Quebec Singer Marie-Mai Talks Hosting CSHF, New Album, Rainbows and Hockey

by Karen Bliss | November 14, 2024

Pop singer-songwriter Marie-Mai — who has hosted the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (CSHF) twice, in 2022 and 2024 — is a bona-fide star in Quebec, whose diverse career in entertainment not only includes music, but hosting, acting, and mentoring. 

The multi-platinum selling artist, who first rose to fame over 20 years ago on the first season of TV talent search Star Académie in 2003 then a decade later was a judge herself on season 1 of The Voix (The Voice), is now a five-time ADISQ Award winner for female artist of the year, who has sold out Montreal’s Bell Centre 15 times throughout her career.  

She has just released her seventh studio album, appropriately titled Sept, her first in six years, was a judge on the just-wrapped first season of the TV show Quel Talent!, and host of Big Brother Célébrités for the fifth season, starting up again in January 2025.

Marie-Mai, whose surname is Bouchard, records in French but has put out some English-language tracks and collabs, including 2019’s “The Good Ones” with country artist Tebey.

Karen Bliss caught up with Marie-Mai to find out how she enjoys coming to Toronto for the CSHF, what connections she’s made, her new album, and advice for young francophone artists.

Despite having a thriving career in Quebec for 20 years, when you come to Toronto, you must meet people in the industry not familiar with you.  How has it been each time you come back?

I have this awesome connection with Toronto. It’s been like that for a couple of years, starting with the first time, I did the show called The Launch. 

You were a coach/mentor on season 2 [2019].

Exactly. I realized that in Toronto, it’s a small group of people like technicians, and people on crews, that work on many different shows. So a lot of people on the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame team are the same people that I used to work with the last time I was in Toronto. It felt like family from the first time I hosted it.

And like you said, there’s also a sense of wanting to prove myself.  I know I can do a job like that. I hosted the Canada Day as well in Ottawa [2024]. It’s a slow process of getting into the hosting field that I’ve been experiencing for the last couple of years. It feels very natural.  I’m a very driven person as well and I want to do a good job. And when you have a room filled with artists that you admire, it fuels you up.

It’s so inspiring to be in a room, with, say, Alanis Morissette, Bryan Adams, and this year Nelly Furtado, and Sarah McLachlan. It’s unbelievable. It really, really is. My job, I see is shining the brightest light on them and making sure that they spend the most beautiful night ever. Year after year, we’re celebrating la crème de la crème.

How was it for you singing “What About Love” with Corey Hart, a Quebec icon, for Jim Vallance’s induction in 2022? 

It was actually really fun. It was a lot of pressure because it’s a hard song to sing. The thing that I love the most is surprising people, and, especially, in Toronto, like you said, they’re getting to know who I am. Hosting is one thing, but stepping on stage and rocking out, was so satisfying because people were like, “Is this the girl that we just saw a couple minutes ago?” Yeah, I can also do that [laughs].  

I wish I could have sung this year, but I had such a busy month because I was just releasing my album, and I was all over the place, so I didn’t have time to learn a song to add to the job that I was already doing hosting. But maybe next year, who knows? 

Has coming to Toronto opened doors for you in terms of collaboration? 

Of course. I keep in touch with so many people that I meet when I go to Toronto. But, the most important thing I take away from it is I’ve been doing this for 22 years now, in Quebec, French language, and hosting, and singing, and songwriting, but still learning something new is very exciting. I love music. It’s my first passion. It’s my reason for being in the industry in the first place. But anything that you love doing, do it for long enough and you want to try different things. You want to step out. 

Dance-pop, that’s your love? After you did the song with Tebey, you never considered doing a country album? 

I love pop music, but I’ve always done a multitude of genres in my albums because I don’t like boxes. I don’t want to stay too comfortable in one space. And I love all genres of music. I love country music. I love pop music. I love rock music. I love classical music. I love playing acoustic as well. I see music as a rainbow, and I don’t want to choose a colour. I like all of the colours in my rainbow [laughs]. 

So it’s the same thing with hosting or playing in movies or doing [Letterkenny spinoff TV show] Shoresy last season. It’s just continuing to move forward and trying different things and trying to figure out where my limit is and I haven’t found it yet, so that’s pretty great [laughs].

We in English-speaking Canada, it seems, are just starting to get to the French-language artists. Even Diane Tell, who was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame this year, I’m sure a lot of people didn’t know about her career and all her accomplishments. Do you have any advice for up-and-comers from Quebec looking to expand their reach beyond the province?

More than ever with streaming platforms, music travels far and wide. Charlotte Cardin was on my team on The Voice [La Voix]. That’s where she started many years ago. And she really got to the point, not because of the show, but because her music was able to travel through streaming platforms, through social media. She has a great record company that was willing to take the risk because it’s getting harder and harder for record companies to truly invest in their artists because it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge and it is a risk. And she’s had the most beautiful road to success doing it authentically and sharing it with as many people as she could. 

These are the years that we’re living in, where music gets to expand through social media and streaming platforms. So I would say to younger artists, just do the music that you want to do. Just don’t sacrifice your integrity for success. Believe in yourself because nobody will believe in you as much as you will. And just go and run for it. I always have this hockey comparison: If somebody gives me a pass, I’ll score. That’s my job. My job is scoring. So, surround yourself with people who are willing to give you good passes.

You have just put out a new album. It’s been a while. Obviously, you think about what you want to do, the overall sound, who you are as a person now and having to tour it eventually. Tell me about some of those things.

I waited for a long time before actually committing to making an album because I just had started hosting Big Brother in Quebec in 2020. That was my first year. I’ve been hosting it for five years now. Kept me really busy throughout the year. And I have different TV hosting gigs that I also do on the side. And I needed a break.

I needed to figure out what my next sound was going to be, and what I wanted to write about. When I finish an album, I always have the deep sense of having said all that I wanted to say for that period of time, that I just need to live my life and find inspiration through experiences. And that’s exactly what happened. So for a couple of years, I didn’t even think about writing; I let it go and I let it come to me. 

So, after a couple of years, I get this urge to pick up a pen and a piece of paper. And that’s my sign [laughs]. “I think you have something to say here.” And I met Luca, the producer [Lucas Liberatore] — that’s his producing name — once. We did one song and I knew instantly that he was my guy. We love pop. We love rock. We love electronic music and piano. And I knew he could do it all. 

He was your main collaborator on Sept? 

We co-write together. I do mostly the lyrics and maybe half of the melodies, and he does half of the melodies and he does the tracks. So we really complete one another very well in the studio. It was a very intimate album because it had been so long since my last. I wanted to really put people on the same page emotionally to where I am today. So I really dug deep.

I tried to be as transparent and vulnerable as possible. And that’s a tough thing to do when you meet a new producer as well, getting vulnerable like that in the studio, but he made me feel so welcomed and accepted. I really got to deliver my best performance because he made me feel like I was in a safe space. 

Will we see you doing shows here? 

That would be amazing. We’ll definitely see more of me in Toronto. We have many things up our sleeves. But as far as a show goes, that would be amazing. I’m going to do festivals next summer [in Quebec] and the one after as well.