Lydia Képinski

According to her Wikipedia page, Lydia Képinski is a Quebec independent pop singer-songwriter. The doors of success are wide open for this voice, as fragile as it is invincible, on the Montreal scene; let’s bet that soon we will know how to spell her name correctly.

After several years of rejections in various competitions, Lydia Képinski unexpectedly won the 21st edition of Francouvertes in 2017. A first EP was released the year before, in 2016, marking the beginning of her collaboration with her producer Blaise Borboën-Léonard and her label Chivi Chivi.

Her first album, titled Premier juin, was released in the spring of 2018, opening doors for her across Quebec. In addition to being included on the long list for the prestigious Polaris Prize, it earned six nominations at the 2018 ADISQ Gala, including Revelation of the Year and Album of the Year – Critics’ Choice, and won the Pop Album of the Year award at GAMIQ as well as the André Dédé Fortin award at the SPACQ Gala. Lydia gave an important concert at the Cinéma L’Amour as part of Pop Montréal.

A year later, she enlisted Montreal DJs and producers to create an electronic reinterpretation of Premier juin. Premier juin remix was released in 2019, featuring contributions from CRi, Robert Robert, and Ryan Playground, among others.

In April 2022, the Montreal artist returned in force with Depuis, her second album created alongside Blaise Borboën-Léonard as producer. The eleven tracks form a narrative thread of everything that has happened since the release of Premier juin. The album is a rich mix of autobiographical references and emancipating adventures that explore the vertigo of identity. Warmly received by the public and critics, it led the musician and her band to perform over a hundred shows of the new concert, mainly in Quebec but also in France, Belgium, and the United States. The Depuis tour met with critical acclaim and sold-out shows. This second album also won two GAMIQ awards (Pop Album and Music Video of the Year), received four nominations at ADISQ (Songwriter of the Year, Album of the Year – Alternative, Sound and Mixing of the Year, Arrangements of the Year), and was once again on the long list for the Polaris Prize.

In March 2023, Képinski released a song in collaboration with Les Louanges. “J’aime quand on danse (tes mains sur mes hanches)” achieved the hoped-for success and set the stage for what could be a series of collaborative pieces. Indeed, September 2024 marks the release of a single featuring Simon Proulx from the band Les Trois Accords. “Juste amis” is a pop ballad that blends the worlds of the two musicians.