TeddyBear

His voice tells stories of the human soul at its most uplifting, unsettling, melancholic, and disturbing. Through his songs, TeddyBear, just 24 years old, paints portraits of what he observes and hears, often in the first person. And his debut album, Le plus beau, is, as he puts it, “the result of twenty-four years of life in the mind of a guy who struggles with his times.”

Neither entirely chanson nor entirely pop, drawing on rap as well as old-time tunes, TeddyBear’s music refuses to fit into categories. His lyrics do too, keeping their distance from macho narratives and heroic role models. Le Plus Beau never tries to manufacture a persona.

Instead, it prefers to reveal the vulnerabilities of a young man who doubts, cries, feels afraid, and loves… sometimes too intensely. So what! Perhaps this is where the contagious energy of this debut album lies.