Marianne Beaulieu built an audience by sharing cover songs online. Now the Montreal indie folk singer-songwriter is balancing those interpretations with original music, including her EP Are We There Yet?, in her live sets.
From covers to original songs
Beaulieu began posting covers on social media in 2019, drawing inspiration from Noah Kahan, Bon Iver and Gracie Abrams. During the lockdown, she sang at her piano every day and filmed every other day. Her online community grew to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
She sees a cover as an opportunity to interpret lyrics through her own experience. With an original song, the challenge is to reconnect with the feelings she had when she wrote it. She says listeners who respond to her covers are responding to her interpretation, regardless of whether they later seek out her own songs.
Time, language and the stage
Are We There Yet? explores her changing sense of time. Beaulieu says she was unprepared for the nostalgia and awareness of time passing that she experienced in her twenties.
She writes in both French and English. French feels more immediate and vulnerable to her because it is the language in which she thinks and lives; translating her thoughts into English gives her more distance from difficult emotions.
Her recent setlists combine originals, unreleased songs and rotating covers, generally within indie folk. Beaulieu has performed live for less than two years and says she is still learning to feel at ease onstage. Touring has also made her more aware of the emotional highs around shows and the adjustment of returning home afterward.
