Marc Hatem | A Separate State of Mind

As I told you more than a month ago, Lebanon would be represented this year – and hopefully represented well – by Marc Hatem on France’s The Voice. Leading up to Mark’s episode, another Lebanese called Kassem, but whose stage name is Lukas, appeared on The Voice and managed to make it through to the next round as part of Zazie’s team.

A short while ago, Marc Hatem took France to Church – almost literally – with a glorious rendition of Hozier’s awesome “Take Me To Church.”

Boasting bombastic vocals which he makes look utterly effortless, Marc blazed through his audition, getting all 4 coaches to turn. His voice was compared to “caviar” by Florent Pagny, whatever that means.

Check out his performance here:

Marc ended up choosing Garou as his coach, which sounds like a good fit given the two have similar vocal tendencies.

Marc Hatem The Voice

Of course, Marc was also well received by French and Lebanese audiences alike with his Facebook page amassing thousands of likes over a few hours following his performance.

It’s sad to see such talents needing to leave the country to make a name for themselves, but this is how things are unfortunately. I wish Marc the best of luck on The Voice’s future episodes.

The string of talents we’re exporting to France’s The Voice continues this year in the form of Marc Hatem. I have no idea how long Lebanese are going to go on France’s The Voice, especially when the local version of the show is extremely successful and no French participant has made it on a commercial scale before, but might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

I was told of this news around two months ago from a private source, and given that the show starts tomorrow I figured it’s now the time to share it.

Marc is a young and extremely promising singer who is unlike anything Lebanon has sent France’s The Voice. His voice is reminiscent of a younger Josh Groban that Marc probably considers as his idol given how often he covers him. He is also mostly unknown, to break off from the recent two years in which Hiba Tawaji and Aline Lahoud both tried their luck at the show, and both ultimately not making it with varyingly impressive results.

The reason why Marc might do better on the show – or at least as well as previous Lebanese participants – is the fact that his voice sounds tailor-made to these kind of talent shows whereby those who hit the highest and most spectacular of notes are those that people rally behind.

His musical upbringing being mostly of Western music also means that he won’t be able to rely on using Arabic as a gimmick to get people talking: it will just have to be him and what he can do with his talent. Based on what I’ve heard, he is superb and should make it far.

Good luck to him. The show starts on TF1 tomorrow. Meanwhile, check out a few of Marc’s previous performances on YouTube and I hope you’re as impressed as I am: