Haitian Beatz

It’s not quite the same as a starlet getting discovered by a Hollywood mogul at a drugstore on Sunset Boulevard – but it comes pretty darn close.

Montreal singer Marie-Christine Depestre – who goes by the stage name of Marie-Christine – was performing in the stage show Soul City a few years back, and the show’s musical director, Michael Litresits, who had worked with Corey Hart, sent the pop star a demo of Marie-Christine’s music – by email no less. It was a cover of the Aretha Franklin classic You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman), and apparently the man behind Sunglasses at Night really dug it.

Next thing Marie-Christine knew, she was flying down to Miami to meet Hart, who was spending a few months there with his wife, the Quebec singer Julie Masse, and their four kids. And, well, let’s let Marie-Christine tell the rest of the story:

“He came to pick me up at the airport and I was very nervous,” she said during a recent interview in a Little Burgundy café. “He’s a star. I knew his songs. But he’s really good at making people feel comfortable. So it wasn’t very long before that nervousness left. Then we just talked for a couple of hours, got to know each other. Then he brought me to meet his family. Then he asked me to sing a song … in his kitchen. I was kind of put on the spot to audition in front of the family. They were all there. He taught me the song really quickly, his song Silence, which is on the album.

“I sang to him and his family – and a dog. A cappella. That was quite a moment. It went well, I guess. It all worked out.”

Indeed, it did. Marie-Christine became the first artist to sign with Hart’s label, Siena Records, which is distributed by Warner Music Canada, and nearly four years later her debut album, Walk in Beauty, is set to be launched Tuesday. It is executive-produced by Hart, and it includes nine tunes written or co-written by one of the biggest Canadian pop stars of the ’80s, including an intriguing rhythmic reboot of his signature hit, Sunglasses at Night. It is reinvented in hard-to-resist fashion by Marie-Christine’s old pal DJ Champion – whom she has often performed with – as Girl in Shades.

Hart also wrote a few songs specifically for Marie-Christine, including Port-au-Prince, a nod to her Haitian roots.