Carla Bruni

Carla Bruni has built a multifaceted career as an Italian-French vocalist, composer, performer, and former French First Lady. Long before she realized her early ambition to record professionally, she ranked among Business Age’s highest-earning models, appeared on screen in Prêt-à-Porter and Unzipped, and supplied successful material for Julien Clerc and other artists. Her 2003 debut, Quelqu’un M’a Dit, issued on Naive, announced her arrival as a major pop figure; the record moved more than two million units and remained inside the French Top Ten for thirty-four weeks. A skilled nylon-string guitarist, she sings in a gentle, reedy contralto and relies chiefly on that instrument when writing. While her work draws from the nouveaux chanson lineage, it also incorporates elements of rock, blues, and jazz. On her 2007 follow-up, No Promises, she set poems by international literary figures to original melodies. She encountered recently elected president Nicolas Sarkozy at a private dinner late that year; the couple wed at the Elysée Palace in February 2008. Later the same year she issued her third collection, Comme Si De Rien N’Était, which reached number one in France. Official responsibilities consumed most of her schedule, yet she still contributed individual tracks to benefit compilations and tribute projects. Her fourth studio album, Little French Songs, emerged in 2013, roughly a year after Sarkozy left office, and mixed newly composed pieces with reinterpretations of melodies by Charles Trenet and Frédéric Chopin. Following a concert recording released in 2014, she returned with the studio covers set French Touch in 2017.

Born in Turin to concert pianist Marisa Borini and Italian-born Brazilian grocery executive Maurizio Remmert, Bruni grew up under the legal guardianship of industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, inheriting a share of her adoptive grandfather’s tire-manufacturing wealth. The family relocated to France in 1975 amid a wave of politically motivated kidnappings carried out by Italy’s Red Brigades. After settling in Paris she attended the Château Mont-Choisi boarding school in Lausanne, then briefly studied art and architecture before leaving at nineteen to pursue modeling. A single snapshot selected by GUESS? president and creative director Paul Marciano transformed her into an immediate sensation. Runway and editorial work followed for Prada, Chanel, Christian Dior, and Givenchy. In a 1998 interview she stated that she would accept modeling assignments only when genuine creativity was involved. She appeared less frequently thereafter for Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier. By 1998 she had stepped away from fashion to concentrate on music, forwarding a full set of lyrics to Julien Clerc the following year; he fashioned six of them into songs for his 2000 album Si J’Etais Elle.

Her own recording debut arrived with Quelqu’un M’a Dit, whose largely self-penned songs reflected admiration for Joni Mitchell and Serge Gainsbourg. The album repeated its domestic success abroad, selling beyond two million copies and logging thirty-four weeks in the Top Ten. European and select American dates supported the release. She contributed a reading of Leonard Cohen’s “In My Secret Life” to trumpeter Till Bronner’s 2006 album Oceana. January 2007 brought the second album, No Promises, which paired her melodies with verse by Christina Rossetti, Dorothy Parker, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and W. H. Auden. While touring that material she met the recently divorced Nicolas Sarkozy; their courtship led to a February 2008 wedding at the Elysée Palace. Also in 2008 she released the candid Comme Si De Rien N’Était, produced by Dominique Blanc-Francard and comprising twelve originals, the 1950s standard “You Belong to Me,” and a setting of Michel Houellebecq’s “La Possibilité d’une île.” All proceeds were directed to charitable causes. Subsequent years found her occupied with state duties, though she performed at Nelson Mandela’s ninety-first-birthday gala at Radio City Music Hall in July 2009 and recorded a duet of “And I Love Her” with Harry Connick Jr. for the French edition of his album Your Songs. She accepted a cameo in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris and supplied a cover of David Bowie’s “Absolute Beginners” to the 2010 War Child tribute We Were So Turned On.

After Sarkozy’s reelection defeat, Bruni resumed recording. Her Verve debut Little French Songs appeared internationally in April 2013 and earned widespread acclaim; she toured Europe, Asia, and selected U.S. cities in support. The live package L’Olympia followed in 2014, featuring solo songs, collaborations with Clerc, Trenet, and Leos Carax, plus readings of Barbara’s “Si La Photo Est Bonne” and John Prine’s “All the Best,” the latter shared with Marianne Faithfull. For French Touch she partnered with producer, arranger, and songwriter David Foster in Paris and Los Angeles, delivering new interpretations of “Moon River,” Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” Billy Sherrill’s “Stand by Your Man,” and reimagined versions of the Clash’s “Jimmy Jazz,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day,” the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” and Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.” Tracks were unveiled gradually over five months before the complete album surfaced in October 2017.

After an eighteen-month European theater tour she reentered the studio in October 2019 with producer Albin De La Simone. Sessions halted when the Covid-19 pandemic imposed quarantine; her son contracted the virus, prompting repeated testing for the family. Recording resumed once France eased restrictions in July, and the resulting self-titled album Carla Bruni appeared on Barclay in October 2020. It contained nine original compositions, two songs written for her by Michel Amsellem, and “Voglio L’amore,” co-authored with her sister Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.