When Pop Meets Country: Marie Mai and Tebey Find Harmony in Collaboration
Back in 2019, when French Canadian pop singer Marie Mai heard country artist and producer Tebey's song The Good Ones, she immediately knew she had to be on it. Her response to him didn't come as quickly, though. 'I was sitting on pins and needles for a week and a half for her to respond!' Tebey jokes.
Once they made the connection, he jet-set off to the north of Montreal to record together. They quickly became friends and, in turn, built a partnership of sorts. Singing together opened up opportunities for each of them to be heard by a new fanbase and to be heard differently by their own.
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Mai says, 'My goal in life was to always travel with my music. To me, music is not a language. It is not a French thing or an English thing, it's about sharing your emotion, and that in itself is a language.'
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Through the process, Mai felt challenged by the genre and by singing in English. She says, 'Country music is so precise…every single artist on a country song sounds immaculate.' She focused on her accent, her intention, and putting herself into the piece wherever she could. Regardless, the two loved working together, felt they sounded fantastic together, and Mai calls Tebey a 'great coach!'
'We've been really lucky,' Tebey gushed. 'Obviously our relationship has been developing as friends over the last year or so, but it really was effortless… you never know what you're going to get collaborating with someone because we didn't really know each other, but it worked out for us.'
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