Alain Barrière

French singer and songwriter Alain Barriere reached the height of his fame across the 1960s and 1970s. A strong resurgence in the late 1990s drew fresh attention to the veteran artist and rekindled enthusiasm for his catalog. He was born Alain Bellec on November 18, 1935, in La Trinité-sur-Mer, Bretagne, France, took the professional name Alain Barriere in 1961, and issued his first recording that year, the single “Cathy,” on RCA Victor. Breakthrough success arrived in 1963 with “Elle Était Si Jolie,” chosen as France’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, where it finished fifth. Additional hits followed, among them “Ma Vie” in 1964, while Barriere also took roles in films such as Pas de Panique (1965) and played several concerts at L’Olympia in Paris during the mid-1960s surge. Although he continued to release new material each year through the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s, his pace of output slowed markedly by the early 1980s. Of all the successes he accumulated, the 1975 duet “Tu T’en Vas” with Noëlle Cordier proved the largest, topping charts in France and across much of western Europe. After a long absence from the spotlight that included a move to North America, Barriere mounted a major return in 1997 with the double-disc retrospective 30 Annees en Chansons: Ma Vie and the new album Barriere 97. A keenly awaited concert at Salle Pleyel in Paris the following year highlighted the comeback. In later years he released the autobiography Ma Vie (2006), and further anthologies such as La Compilation Authentique (2005) appeared as well.