Lorie brings 25-year comeback tour to Montreal

Lorie Pester, the French pop phenomenon who arrived with a bang in 2001 with her megahit "Je serai (ta meilleure amie)," is returning to Montreal for the first time in her career—and she's bringing a full tour. At 44, mother of five-year-old daughter Nina, Lorie has just wrapped a run of roughly twenty major French venues and will play four shows in the Montreal and Quebec City areas.

She spent the last decade working in small doses: recording music, appearing in French television series, and acting in films including "Dragon Blade" alongside Jackie Chan and Adrien Brody. But it was the 2024 release of the two-volume "Hyper Lorie"—albums where she revisits her hits with contemporary artists, including rapper Piche (who also performed at Montreal's Francos)—that sparked something unexpected.

"The feedback was very positive, and the messages coming back most often were 'OK, great, but when's a tour? When's a concert?'" Lorie told Le Devoir. "We got so many that we thought, 'Maybe there's something to do here.'" The result exceeded her expectations. At a recent two-night stand at the Zénith de Paris, she performed in front of 12,000 fans in what she describes as controlled chaos. "It's packed, people are crazy, but in the good way. They sing like crazy, they dance, they laugh, they cry. We pass through every emotion and it's really great."

The phenomenon speaks to nostalgia's pull. Lorie's rather naive pop songs still resonate with audiences who grew up with them. "I kind of rocked their childhood, their adolescence," she explained. "There's this little Proust's madeleine quality—this nostalgia. People want to relive those moments. When you look at how the world is going today, it's not going super well. I think people want to find themselves in that period when they were a bit more carefree, innocent, periods maybe easier to live through for them."

Lachapelle trained extensively for the physical and vocal demands of a ninety-minute set across twenty closely-scheduled shows, working with trainers to rebuild her stamina. "I realized I'm not 20 anymore, so the soreness and all that—you recover from it less quickly," she said. Ironically, her biggest asset proved to be her audience: "Actually, I realized the public knows all the words by heart. I might not sing for an hour and a half because the public would do it for me."

Early in her career, Lorie took control of her assets by launching her own production company in 2002, allowing her to avoid surrendering everything to a record label. That independence continues today. "I can really do as I want and when I want, and with whom I want," she said.