Newlywed Quebec heart-throb Roch Voisine has just one thing to say to all his female fans -- sorry.

"I couldn't have married all of them," the singer laughs. "Besides, they are all married with kids, too, so why can't I get married?"

Voisine married 23-year-old Myriam St-Jean, an accounts manager from Montreal, in December after a whirlwind seven-month courtship. Not that it was too fast for him.

"I'm not a teenager. I've gone through that stage. If it's good, you know," he says.

Voisine, 40, is not the kind of person who normally rushes into things. He spent two years working on his new English album, Higher.

The album is more of an upbeat affair than past efforts, with songs such as the title track, Don't Give Up and Life's a Beach, giving listeners a truer impression of the state of Voisine's life, which isn't as dreary as some of his music would have you believe, he says.

"I was a bit sick and tired of singing sad songs all the time. My life is not that sad, so I would sit down with my friends and say, 'All right, let's write something positive,' " he says. "I'm trying to be me as much as possible."

Since his first album, Helene, in 1989, Voisine has been known mostly as a balladeer. His breakthrough hit in English Canada, I'll Always be There, turned out to be a popular tune at weddings.

Higher is Voisine's 14th album and sixth full-length in English. Although people outside of Quebec may not have heard much from Voisine since he released a Christmas album three years ago, he hasn't been idle. He recorded and released another French album and spent a lot of time touring Quebec and Europe, where he is extremely popular.

"We've been working in French for a long time, and it was long overdue for another English record," he says.

But surprisingly, even on Voisine's francophone albums, all the songs are written in English and then translated.

"French is a very, very hard language to write in and make it interesting."

This is Voisine's first full Canadian tour since the Christmas album tour three years ago. But his new wife doesn't have to be worried about the fact Voisine's antics on the road, he says. Although he is considered somewhat of a sex symbol, his days playing the field are far behind him.

"The days of young women running after me in the street is far gone. There's not much to worry about in terms of general annoyance of a phenomenon like that, and I don't think she sees it as a threat," he says.