Les Enfoirés

Founded by comedian Coluche, Les Enfoirés bring together an assembly of French celebrities who gather annually to stage a charity concert tour. The series of events, which launched in 1986, has enjoyed widespread popularity and has routinely produced number-one album releases.

Born October 28, 1944, and deceased June 19, 1986, Coluche established the troupe and served as host of its inaugural television broadcast on January 26, 1986. The program featured five additional performers: Jean-Jacques Goldman, who appeared in every subsequent edition, Yves Montand, Nathalie Baye, Michel Platini, and Michel Drucker. Six months after Coluche’s death in a motorcycle accident, his widow Véronique Colucci began arranging an annual concert to benefit his foundation, Les Restos du Coeur. The second edition aired on December 1, 1987, and within a few years the format expanded into a nationwide tour that visited multiple cities before concluding with a televised special on January 5, 1990. That first tour yielded the initial album, Tournée d'Enfoirés (1990), which documented appearances by Goldman, Michel Sardou, Eddy Mitchell, Véronique Sanson, and Johnny Hallyday.

Throughout the 1990s the organization confined its activities to standalone television specials, each later issued on disc: La Soirée des Enfoirés à l'Opéra (1992), Les Enfoirés Chantent Starmania (1993), Les Enfoirés au Grand Rex (1994), Les Enfoirés à l'Opéra Comique (1995), La Soirée des Enfoirés (1996), Le Zénith des Enfoirés (1997), Enfoirés en Coeur (1998), and Dernière Édition Avant l'An 2000 (1999).

After 2000, Les Enfoirés added brief promotional tours across France alongside the annual specials, and the resulting albums achieved greater commercial success, beginning with Enfoirés en 2000 (2000) and topping the French charts in nearly every subsequent year. Captured at Le Zénith in Nantes in January 2007, La Caravane des Enfoirés earned triple-platinum certification in France. The pattern of chart-topping releases continued through the 2010s, with each new title reaching number one, from Les Enfoirés... La Crise de Nerfs! (2010) through Au Rendez-vous Des Enfoirés (2016).