Alain Souchon

Alain Souchon, the singer and songwriter, holds wide recognition as the founding figure of modern French pop, conveying the fragile manhood of contemporary life through rare gentleness and playful charm. Frequently partnering with composer Laurent Voulzy, he examined intimate and societal subjects via lyrical elegance, thereby positioning himself as the natural successor to the legacies of Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens. Born Alain Kienast on May 27, 1944, in Casablanca, Morocco, he grew up in Paris beginning at six months of age. A reserved and introspective youngster, he withdrew even more deeply after 1959, when an automobile crash claimed his father’s life. While their mother sustained the household by authoring pulp romance novels, Alain and his siblings relocated to their grandmother’s home, where her regular radio listening acquainted him with the major figures of France’s chanson heritage. In 1961 he traveled to London for studies at the Lycée Français, yet performed poorly, favoring poetry and prose over coursework. Nevertheless he stayed in London, taking work as a bartender prior to his return to Paris, where he took up guitar and began composing songs shaped by Britain’s emerging rock & roll groups. Following several years of performances in modest Left Bank clubs, Souchon secured a recording contract in 1971 and issued his first single, “Je Suis un Voyageur,” on Pathé Marconi. Two further releases met identical commercial failure, prompting swift termination of the agreement.

Even so, his material drew the notice of RCA A&R director Bob Socquet, who in 1973 urged him to enter “L’Amour 1830,” a composition originally penned for Italian singer Frédéric François, into Antibes’ yearly Rose d’Or contest. Souchon performed the piece himself and received both the critics’ prize and a special press award. More importantly, by the close of that year he began collaborating with composer Laurent Voulzy, another singer-songwriter whose compositional strengths complemented Souchon’s lyric-writing talents. In 1974 the pair released their first album, J’ai 10 Ans, achieving their initial breakthrough with the title track. The following year Bidon solidified their stardom and garnered broad critical praise. Although 1977’s Jamais Content introduced Souchon’s emblematic “Allô Maman Bobo,” the duo also succeeded with Voulzy’s solo single “Rockcollection,” and in subsequent years their individual careers advanced in tandem, each partner offsetting the other’s limitations. Souchon’s 1978 album Toto 30 Ans reflected his bleakest and most disillusioned work to that point, yet the singles “Le Bagad de Lann Bihoue” and “Papa Mambo” achieved major chart success. The record further included “L’Amour en Fuite,” written at the request of filmmaker François Truffaut for the soundtrack of his film of the same title. After 1980’s Rame, Souchon made his screen debut, co-starring in Claude Berri’s Je Vous Aime and embodying the fragile, haunted persona first delineated in his songs.

Throughout the early 1980s Souchon sustained his cinematic involvement, appearing opposite Yves Montand and Catherine Deneuve in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s 1981 success Tout Feu Tout Flamme and earning strong reviews for his role with Isabelle Adjani in 1983’s L’Été Meurtrier. Not until autumn 1983 did he issue another album, On Avance, containing only one Voulzy collaboration, “Saute en l’Air.” They soon resumed full partnership, retreating to Brittany and Saint-Tropez to compose Souchon’s 1985 follow-up, C’est Comme Vous Voulez, which yielded the hit “La Ballade de Jim.” Following a double-bill tour with Véronique Sanson, he returned to film in 1987 with Jacques Doillon’s Comédie, co-starring Jane Birkin. In summer 1989 Souchon headlined a month-long engagement at Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Elysées to promote Ultra Moderne Solitude; “Quand Je Serrai KO,” co-written with Voulzy, later received Victoires de la Musique honors as song of the year. He re-emerged in 1993 with the critically and commercially triumphant C’est Déjà Ça, anchored by the single “Foule Sentimentale,” which rapidly became a modern French standard. The next February he collected Victoires de la Musique awards for both Best Song of the Year and Best Male Artist, then headlined three sold-out Zenith concerts that autumn, documented on the live album Défoule Sentimentale.

Souchon and Voulzy subsequently joined their sons Pierre and Julien, previously active together in the pop group Les Cherche Midi, to supply material for a 1994 benefit album benefiting the children’s AIDS charity Solidarité Enfants Sida. Souchon also toured on behalf of the organization and performed at two Restaurants de Coeur benefit concerts. His next studio album, Aux Ras des Pâquerettes, appeared in 1999, followed a year later by a 140-date tour that continued into 2001 and was succeeded by a short acoustic outing. Souchon marked his sixtieth birthday in 2004, after which his release pace diminished. In February 2005, marking the twentieth anniversary of the Victoires de la Musique, he received a special Victoire recognizing the enduring appeal and influence of “Foule Sentimentale,” and that autumn he released La Vie Théodore, a concept album partly inspired by French geographer Théodore Monod.

Souchon’s subsequent album, Écoutez d’où Ma Peine Vient, issued in 2008, stood out both for its relatively rapid arrival and for Laurent Voulzy’s near-total absence, the latter occupied with his own thirtieth-anniversary projects. Souchon composed most of the music himself, assisted on two tracks by his son Pierre. After an extensive tour captured on the live album Alain Souchon Est Chanteur, he returned to the studio—again without Voulzy, who was preparing a solo record—to record an album of youthful cover versions, À Cause d’Elles, released in 2011.