Biography
The French singer and songwriter Alain Barriere reached the height of his fame during the 1960s and 1970s. A late-1990s return to recording also drew strong audiences and renewed attention to the veteran artist. He entered the world as Alain Bellec on November 18, 1935, in La Trinité-sur-Mer, Bretagne, France. In 1961 he took the stage name Alain Barriere and issued his first single, "Cathy," on RCA Victor. His breakthrough arrived the following year with "Elle Était Si Jolie," selected as France’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, where it placed fifth. Further successes followed, among them the 1964 release "Ma Vie," while he also began taking film roles, including an appearance in Pas de Panique (1965), and played multiple shows at L’Olympia in Paris during that mid-decade surge. Although he kept issuing new recordings each year through the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s, his activity diminished sharply by the early 1980s. Among all his chart entries, the 1975 duet "Tu T’en Vas" with Noëlle Cordier proved the most enduring, topping charts in France and across much of western Europe. After a long absence from public view that included an extended stay in North America, Barriere mounted a major return in 1997 via the double-disc retrospective 30 Annees en Chansons: Ma Vie and the fresh studio set Barriere 97. A widely anticipated concert at Salle Pleyel in Paris the next year confirmed the revival. In later years he issued the memoir Ma Vie (2006), and further anthologies such as La Compilation Authentique (2005) appeared.
Albums