Music / Madeon

Tell me whose side you're on...

There is a place in the distance
A place that I've been dreaming of
No, oh time and space don't exist there
We can dance like there's no tomorrow...

— Madeon, "The City"

Hugo Leclercq is a French electronic music producer and DJ best known for his work as Madeon. His most popular work includes his breakthrough 2011 mashup "Pop Culture" — so named for its use of 39 popular songs from across the worlds of pop music and electronica — and "Shelter," a collaboration between him and longtime friend Porter Robinson.

A producer since his tween years, Hugo's work generally blends modern electro house, nu-disco and pop into a slick, distinctive sound, earning him a diverse and sizable fanbase in the scene. His first album, Adventure, dropped in 2015 to critical acclaim, and the sophomore follow-up, Good Faith, came out in November 2019.

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Tropes:

• Alternate Reality Game: He's pretty fond of these, making use of them for the promotion of his first two albums:
  • For Adventure, Hugo's music videos, single covers and promotional material made use of a specialized alphabet◊ as part of an ARG expanding the narrative of the videos for "You're On," "Pay No Mind" and "Nonsense."
  • Hugo kicked off the album cycle for his second full length by changing his Twitter profile picture to an inverted color palette version of the original image, and teased its lead single "All My Friends" by releasing an exclusive vinyl to four cities in the States and Europe a week before its full release.
  • Hidden messages in the video for The Prince led into Hugo's most elaborate ARG yet; 12122017. As documented here, fans would solve cryptic puzzles to find the six track names for his new EP Celine, which saw a limited release once they had all been discovered.
• Animated Music Video:
  • "Shelter." Has its own page.
  • "Pop Culture" has a number of unofficial AMV mashup edits that grew popular by matching the song's style. Fan.tasia is one of the more well-known of these.
• Auto-Tune: Occasionally shows up as part of his style. "Zephyr" uses it alongside a voice changer effect on Hugo's vocals, while Cut the Kid places a prominent vocoder effect on the vocal loop used throughout.
• Childhood Friend Romance: "Hold Me Just Because" is a straightforward love ballad directed to someone Hugo fell for as a child, and still hasn't let go years later.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • His Evil Edit of Shelter is a classic example, hitting much harder with a moodier sound than the original mix.
  • More recently, there's The Prince, a song Madeon originally intended to include in Good Faith but decided to release separately because of how dark it was compared to the rest of the album's songs.
  • According to the record's description, the Celine EP was written and recorded in a fit of anger. The record shows this, with a harsh red and black colour scheme and a darker, more industrial sound.
• Electronic Music: His signature sound is carved out with big Electro House and a heavy pop influence.
• Fan Remake: The visuals from him and Porter's joint Shelter Tour were remade by fans as Shelter: the Movie.
• Genre Mashup: Like Porter, his music mostly classifies as electropop, disco and house, but he brings in elements of indie rock, chiptune and ambient tunes from time to time as well.
• Last Note Nightmare: Absolu, the final track of the Celine EP is a slower, calming piece that contrasts heavily with the rest of the record, only to Jump Scare the listener with ten seconds of heavy bass and growling synths right at the end.
• Limited Lyrics Song: As of the end of this sentence, you now know the entirety of the lyrics to "OK."
• New Sound Album: Good Faith further develops the electropop/nu disco sounds from Adventure, adding elements of gospel, R&B and hip hop on top of them. Hugo himself attributes this development from listening to artists like Frank Ocean, Tame Impala and The Weeknd during the album's production.
• Older Than They Look: Even though he started off his career at an early age, he's been well known for defying the laws of aging for most of it. Just to give you an idea, this image◊ was taken when he was 19. He's downplayed this a bit since then by growing out a beard, but there's no denying the guy's got an uncommonly boyish face still.
• The Outside World: The music videos for "You're On", "Pay No Mind" and "Nonsense" sequentially follow a guy and girl formulate a plan to escape an idyllic but sterile-looking cityscape, but beyond the city walls is nothing but a vast desert and a looming tower that lights up at night. Eventually, they reach the tower (which turns out to just be Madeon's logo) and presumably live Happily Ever After.
• Self-Duplication: During the Good Faith Forever performance of The Prince, there's a section where six silhouettes of Hugo are projected onto the screen behind him, giving the impression that he split himself into seven copies.
• Wingdinglish: The Adventure/Imperial alphabet (see Alternate Reality Game above).

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Your last chance
Last summer
Last dance
Beat to your own drummer
Go out fighting
Go out young
A flash of lightning
Eclipse the sun