“Fils de Joie” by Stromae

"Fils de Joie", or "Son of joy" in English, is the third single from Multitude, the 2022 album by the Belgian musician Stromae, and it tells the story of a prostitute's child. Stromae wrote the words, shares the music with Sebastian Jakoby and Norman Wille, and produced and arranged it himself, marrying baroque sounds to the heat of Brazilian funk carioca: Bart Naessens plays harpsichord, four string players (Maria Elena Boila, Katelijne Onsia, Dmitry Silvian and Olga Šroubková) fill out the frame, and there's a sample lifted from a teaser for Netflix's Bridgerton. Lionel Capouillez mixed it.

Henry Scholfield directed the video, which casts Stromae as the president of an invented country, speaking at a national funeral held for a sex worker who has gone missing, while officers, wreaths, a military parade and a funeral procession surround him. The song also landed on the FIFA 23 soundtrack.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.