Arcade Fire has announced the separation of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, two of its founding members and a couple for more than two decades. Win and Régine met in 2000, married in 2003 and have a son born in 2013.
Despite their split, Arcade Fire has confirmed the band’s continuity, as well as Win and Régine’s commitment to KANPE, the Haitian-Canadian charity co-founded by Régine in 2010.
This year, Arcade Fire released ‘Pink Elephant’, their seventh album, and their first since Win was accused by several people of sexual misconduct. Régine supported Win publicly.
‘Funeral’, Arcade Fire’s successful debut, was released in 2004, a year after Win and Régine’s marriage. Inspired by the death of relatives of the band, it included songs probably inspired by the romance between the two. “Almost half of the album is structured around the ‘Neighborhood’ series, four songs in the form of a fable that observe the universality of romanticism, death or illness from the innocent prism of adolescence, which gives them an unstoppable evocative power,” wrote Raúl Guillén in this medium. “‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’ opens the album with its spectacular crescendo and its small story about a great love, about young lovers who run away from home through tunnels dug in the snow to find each other.”
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