Nicolas Michaux On Writing In Two Languages And Important Reality Of Music Industry

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At his gig at Reflektor, we chatted with Belgium’s Nicolas Michaux about his new album, bilingualism and the reality of being a musician in 2025

Nicolas Michaux is a singer/songwriter and producer from Belgium. Writing and singing both in English and French, he has released four albums. His most recent, ‘Vitalisme,’ dropped in October last year.

Before his gig at Liège’s Reflektor, we got the chance to chat with Nicolas, who shared honest insights into the new record, dream collaborations and the difficult financial reality of being a musician in 2025.

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Your 4th album dropped in October 2024; we hear different influences between your 3rd album ‘Les Chutes’ which is relatively calm and your new album ‘Vitalisme’ which is more upbeat. What do you think caused the changes?

‘Les chutes’ is made of outtakes from a previous album I worked on called ‘Amour, Colère’ dropped in 2020. It was like an answer, a comment on my 2nd album. There are five songs on ‘Les Chutes’ that are already on ‘Amour, Colère‘ but in different versions, and five tracks I worked on that didn’t make it on ‘Amour, Colère‘.

In comparison of the era of ‘Amour, Colère‘, from 2019 to 2021, the new album is more vibrant. I tried to make a record that talks about difficult subjects but truthful. The truth sometimes is joyous and is also sometimes sad. It’s about both aspects, but I also wanted this record to be holistic, and I called it ‘Vitalisme‘ because it’s about all of that, but I wanted the light to win.

Who’s someone you would love to collaborate with?

My band and I collectively had the chance in 2024 to be hired as a band and myself as a producer for Irma Thomas’, a great soul singer from New Orleans, new album. So, we went there, and we recorded a gospel album with her, and it was incredible. I finished mixing this last week, so it happened beside ‘Vitalisme‘ and it was a big project in 2024.

I produce for other artists too, and it taught me a lot. But there is the chance that Mick Jagger will do a featuring with Irma Thomas on one of the tracks we recorded with her. So if I could collaborate with him someday, it’d be sweet!

What made you start your solo career in 2016? Why did this feel like the right point in your life?

In fact, it takes us back in Luik, because when I was 16, we started a band called L’été 67 with people from there, and we dropped a first EP when I was 20. We did a lot of concerts, we went to Switzerland, to Canada it was really serious. Around 24, everyone one was making their own path, and I wanted to leave Luik and discover other places, so we stopped the band.

I went to Denmark for a year to live with my girlfriend at the time, so suddenly I was alone and it would have been difficult to go back to Brussels or Luik to work with other people. That’s why I started to produce by myself and kind of find myself, because for years I worked for a collective and I love that. I need both, I sometimes need to be alone and do things exactly how I like it without having the opinion of anyone and sometimes I need the collective. Now that I have done a lot of things by myself, I need to play more with the band!

I just try to work the best way possible. If I have friends around me, I’ll take the best of it and make music with them. What “bothered” me when we were working with the band is that we always had between three and ten days in a studio to make an album. But we weren’t making the decisions, there was a producer or a sound engineer because we couldn’t do it ourselves at the time. I needed to learn to produce by myself, even if it wasn’t gonna be good at the beginning, I’ve always like to learn new things, and at that time I was a little bit of a control freak, less now though.

Do you prefer to write in English or French? Why the choice to mix both in one album? What about performing?

I started learning to sing and play music by covering songs from artists like Alain Souchon, Téléphone, but also The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Cure, and others when I was young. It’s always been a part of me. I’m lucky to have a good English accent when I sing, thanks to performing in places like London and the United States, where people think I’m a native English speaker. I also have friends who help me with that.

I now divide my time between Denmark and Belgium because I have two daughters in Denmark, so I speak English more often since I don’t speak Danish very well. I see languages as tools. For a while, French was my tool, and then, as I progressed, English became another one. I’m not going to limit myself. I like both languages. I plan to go live in Italy when I retire and I’m learning Italian so maybe I’ll make songs in Italian.

Writing a good song is equally difficult in both languages, and it’s never easy. If you want to write songs that you’ll still enjoy performing years later, you must put in the effort and pay attention to every detail. You must take the work seriously but not take yourself too seriously.

On stage, I don’t make a distinction. I don’t mind which language I sing in, but English allowed me to do things that I wouldn’t have been able to do in French. For example, I couldn’t sing “Are they going to kill a child?” in French in the same way. And “Chaleur humaine” wouldn’t work in English either. I even tried using ChatGPT to help me write new lyrics, but it was awful. It’s great for many things, but it completely lacks poetry. I don’t feel threatened by it.

What song has the most meaning to you?

I imagine that ‘Piece of Mind’ has something special because it’s a bit of an autobiographical song, so it means a lot to me. But it’s like with my daughters—I don’t choose one over the other. My songs are the same; there are twelve of them, and they’re there because I love them all. The ones I liked less didn’t make it onto the album.

I think ‘Piece of Mind’ is a bit special because it’s the first time I could really be so autobiographical and tell my story, from my childhood to now. It’s not easy to do in a four-minute song, and personally, it moves me a lot. But at the same time, ‘She’s An Easy Rider,’ which isn’t my song, but written by Tucker Zimmerman, also moves me a lot.

I listened to it again this morning because we haven’t played it in a while, and we’re going to play it tonight. I was really moved listening to it because it’s not my song, but strangely, it speaks about things that resonate with me deeply. So I’d say these two songs.

What is it about ‘She’s An Easy Rider’ that drew you to it?

For me, the song is a beautiful anthem to femininity and women in general. I wrote (my version) after a crazy story that happened to me. I first heard about Zimmerman a long time ago because he lives in Luik. He was born in San Francisco and left in the 1960s to avoid the Vietnam War. He traveled through Europe, met Marie-Claire, a woman from Luik, and has lived there ever since.

I visited him later on, but before that, around 2008-2010, I started hearing about him through a musician friend, Philippe Cortot, and I loved what I heard, especially an album called ‘Song Poet‘. At the time, Zimmermann was pretty unknown, but I really connected with his music, particularly during my love story with Naïa.

Later, after my second daughter was born in the spring, I couldn’t get the song ‘She’s An Easy Rider‘ out of my head. With some free time and everyone else on tour, I started playing around and realised I could create a version of the song that felt different but still made sense. I thought it might also bring more attention to what Zimmerman was doing. Eventually, Zimmerman was rediscovered, and he even made an album with Big Thief, one of the biggest indie folk bands in the U.S. I was able to visit him, play him my version of the song, and meet Marie-Claire. He really liked it, and it was a beautiful experience.

Is there a question no one has ever asked that you wish I’d asked you?

A question that I don’t get asked very often is about the socio-economic conditions of artists. People tend to focus on the artists’ work and don’t ask about how much I earn, which is good because it’s a bit of an intrusive question. However, we’re in a situation of increasing precariousness, and I think we should start talking more about the situation of artists. Often, I think the bourgeoisie has perpetuated, whether intentionally or unconsciously, the idea of the “cursed artist” or the “bohemian.”

But I believe it’s time to talk about artists as cultural workers who need to fight for their emancipation and the respect of their working conditions, just like any other workers. In the entertainment industry and even within the music press, these issues are often ignored.

There’s this myth of success—artists saying “I’m doing great, I’m playing sold-out shows,” but the truth is, we’d all benefit from acknowledging that it’s not easy. Sure, some celebrities break through, and that’s great, but the reality is that 99% of artists don’t make a living from streaming.

Nowadays, playlists on Spotify are filled with music created by artificial intelligence, and 75% of the music market is controlled by three big companies, with the remaining 25% shared by many others. These are important issues that artists aren’t often asked about. Things are changing though; I’ve seen James Blake and many others speaking out, saying it’s not working anymore. So, I think journalists should be more interested in the behind-the-scenes reality—not just who you’re dating or the name of your cat, but the actual reality of the industry.

If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?

I would say I have two answers. On one hand, if I think back to the young me at 15, I’m not ashamed to say that I haven’t changed. I’ve done exactly what I said I would do, which is to take my guitar and preach truth and love all around the world. I had a flash when I watched The Beatles Anthology at around 8 or 9 years old. I already loved The Beatles, but then I saw the message, the psychedelism, the Summer of Love, all of it—and I stayed true to that. I formed a band called Eté 67, and now I have a label called Soldiers of Love.

So, I didn’t start out with left-wing ideals just to end up as a banker. When I look at myself in the mirror, I feel a lot of pride about the kid I was. I think the child I was would look at me and say, “You stayed true to what I said we should do.”

On the other hand, I would also tell that young version of myself to take things more seriously, to stop wasting time, and to approach things with more focus. When you’re young, you feel crushed by the weight of the world, and even now, I still feel that way. We try to create and share, but then there’s Trump, there’s Putin… There’s always a battle to fight. The fight isn’t lost. We need to keep going, both for the big questions and for the small ones, to remember that it’s never too late.

Like many young people and people in general, there have been times in my life when I’ve wasted time, when I felt lost. I would try to take things more seriously, pay more attention to myself and to others.

And for last, just for fun, can you describe what the complete opposite of your album is?

The album I haven’t made? It would be the opposite of what I usually do—it would be purely electronic, made entirely with machines. It would be created with the help of artificial intelligence. It would feature lyrics designed to stir up hatred, resentment, and controversy.

Listen to ‘Vitalisme’ here:

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