With “La Fée Originelle,” Lovatine shares the studio session behind one of the standout tracks from “Umeurs,” the project’s collection of mood-driven songs built around the poetry of Patrick Vallée. It’s a two-and-a-half-minute take that trades the sweep of Lovatine’s poet-tribute albums for something more intimate: one poem, one voice, one groove.
A Poem by Patrick Vallée
Unlike the albums built on Ronsard, Baudelaire, Byron or the Sufi poets, “Umeurs” turns to a living author. Patrick Vallée — poet, self-taught artist and co-author of the Lovatine project alongside composer Christophe Laguet (aka Jazz9) — wrote “La Fée Originelle” as part of a set of contemporary poems the pair adapted with his blessing. Where the classics-based records dig into the past, “Umeurs” is a collaboration happening in real time.
The Original Fairy
The title translates loosely as “the original fairy” — a figure caught somewhere between muse and memory. It’s the kind of image “Umeurs” returns to throughout the album: not fairy-tale whimsy, but the private mythology each of us builds to make sense of a feeling. This studio cut keeps that intimacy front and center, letting the lyric breathe over a groove built for close listening rather than a stage.
One Song, Several Lives
“La Fée Originelle” hasn’t stayed still since it first appeared on “Umeurs.” It has resurfaced in a groove-edition rework and been carried live into Lovatine’s Europe Tour sets — proof that a song from the project’s living archive keeps finding new rooms to be played in. This studio version is the one that started it all: no audience, no reinterpretation, just the poem and the take.
