Patrick Watson
Canadian composer, songwriter, and performer Patrick Watson has built a career defined by both intimacy and grandeur. Working closely with longtime collaborators Mishka Stein and Olivier Fairfield, Watson has released a string of gold- and platinum-certified albums while crafting music that moves seamlessly between cinematic art-pop, indie rock, and avant-garde experimentation. His songs—haunting, luminous, and deeply human—have reached audiences around the globe, selling out concert halls and appearing everywhere from television dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and This Is Us to films by Denis Villeneuve, Wim Wenders, and Philippe Falardeau.
Equally at home leading the BBC Orchestra at London’s Barbican or staging impromptu pop-up shows in unexpected places, Watson is also an acclaimed film composer with more than 15 scores to his name. In 2024, he received the inaugural Impact Award at the Canadian Sync Awards, and his viral single “Je te laisserai des mots” became the first French-language song to surpass one billion streams on Spotify—a testament to his rare ability to bridge the popular and the profound.
What is life but an endless series of “uh oh”s? From our earliest childhood accidents to our most overwhelming adult anxieties, it’s a little phrase that looms large throughout our existence. En route to making his new album, Montreal indie-pop maestro Patrick Watson was faced with the biggest “uh oh” a professional singer could endure.
One morning in the winter of 2023, Patrick woke up to discover that his voice—the angelic instrument that propelled 2006’s carnivalesque art-rock opus Close to Paradise to the Polaris Music Prize winner’s podium and turned his piano lullaby “Je te laisserai des mots” into the first Francophone track ever to surpass a billion streams on Spotify—had gone completely kaputt.
“Obviously, I like singing for people, but I was really enjoying my Modular [synth] and diving into instrumental music”—a natural inclination for Patrick, who’s composed over 15 film scores to date. “But then I was like, ‘Oh, it’d be cool to write songs for all these different singers that I really want to hear sing—I’ll find my way out of this situation that way.’ Because my voice wasn’t supposed to come back. And when it did, I just thought having all these other singers featured was still a cooler idea for a record than me singing alone.
PATRICK WATSON
