The meeting was given at the restaurant Le Tournesol. On this gray Wednesday when the sun has turned away from the Parisian sky, the name of the establishment would resonate almost in an ironic way. This contrast is perfectly appropriate for Florent Pagny. The singer, who is releasing his new album this Friday, The future, and will go on tour this fall on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, does not fear to clash. When a fringe of the current French song likes to run on nostalgia to spread its melancholy, it looks straight ahead on what remains to be lived and unveils its epic flights. When others give in to gloom and worry about what will become of the world, he admits that the picture is catastrophic but refuses to give in to despair.
“L’Avenir” is your twentieth studio album. As it approaches its release, do you still feel a little stress, excitement?
We live in a particular era when it comes to an album release. The object itself is losing more and more ground and this streaming is a very special thing, especially for a guy like me. In the end, what will happen will happen. For me, the most important thing is to have this new album with songs that I like, in which I feel good, and that people are happy to hear what I did.
The public has never really turned away from you …
I had my climb and my descent like everyone else. I went up and after three singles, everything went crazy. After three years, I entered a beautiful hole and came back up. It’s true that from the moment I came back with the compilation Welcome to my home which was a hit, I was lucky and I had a lot of success. In the declining times, I also had the chance to be in The Voice. Over the last twenty-eight years, I have had some pretty good stories and things are going well. But we saw the record crumble more and more. [Son attention semble distraite] One day, it came back pleasantly with [il semble chercher ses mots] album Grow old with you. [Il baisse légèrement la voix] I’m sorry but a car passed by earlier and spotted me during the previous interview. There, the people who were inside have just arrived on foot. They are polite, they must tell themselves that I am doing an interview. We will see how they will slip in to take a photo… We will get there!
No problem. You told me about “Growing old with you” [sorti en 2013].
The day I arrive at Grow old with you and… [Il s’adresse en souriant aux trois personnes qui viennent d’arriver] Come take the photo! [Il se lève, se prête au jeu en prenant la pose et, trois minutes plus tard, revient à sa place.] Excuse me !
This happens often ? And is it always fun?
I did everything for that and I must admit that I am served, it’s good. But you have to manage.
Parisians have few opportunities to meet you in the street …
Yes, I’m not there much. I am not a Parisian artist. Besides, on a tour, I end up in Paris. I’m going to do the province first because I’m from there and things are always going better. In Paris, it’s always more complicated. Apart from the time I found myself at L’Olympia in the middle of summer in 2003, it went really well. It was the chef’s surprise, I arrived with Elsewhere Land and My freedom of thought. There was enough to fill the room for a month. But it’s pretty cool, it’s all about managing well, especially since I want to be myself without being surrounded by people saying “No, don’t go see him, don’t talk to him”. This is not me.
So you were talking to me about “Aging with you” and what this album had changed for you.
From there, I returned to commercial success reminiscent of the past. It can still happen to achieve this kind of results, but the problem is that today, we do not really know where we can buy records. All this makes us live in another way. There, I am rather very happy. Calogero gave me a nice gift: he brought me all the songs, went looking for all the authors, he did all the productions, the realizations, the arrangements. He chose the blender and was behind him all day to get what he wanted. Because he knew what he wanted was going to please me.
The fact of being in the present, of not looking back, of moving forward telling yourself that the best is yet to come, is at the heart of your new album.
Sure…
It does not seem so obvious to me in the current French song where a lot of artists are in a nostalgic, melancholy state of mind …
There is a somewhat special atmosphere too, between the climate and the societies. If one is an author and a composer, perhaps they were inspired by all of this and go in this direction. I am an interpreter and I am a messenger. Seeing what is happening, I say to myself: “Let’s send messages that lead us to something else, with more hope. »Even when dealing with a subject like Alzheimer’s with Like before, for example, there is a pleasant side. We know that, in 80% of cases, it is more the others who suffer the disease than the one who has it. We will deal with a serious subject, but we will bring it in a perspective esperanza.
Are you not nostalgic?
No. We are experiencing such incredible, extraordinary things with this evolution of the Internet, technologies, artificial intelligence. It portends a lot of things. I think we are going to take a big slap and that we need to be aware of certain things. To realize that there is current in the socket, you have to put your fingers in it. So we are going to go, we are going to have a good chestnut and then we will understand.
Are you talking about the presidential election, for example?
Oh no, not even. I am not at all politically connected. I am talking about humanity. I’m talking about the world, you know, I live on the planet. I arrived in Paris two days ago, I’m from the southern hemisphere [il vit en Patagonie, au sud de l’Argentine]. I was in winter and if, in France, it rained all the time this summer, there, there was no winter. OK, it was good, but no winter means it’s drought and summer is going to be very difficult. When you see everything that is happening between the climate, societies, religions, economies, the Covid in the middle, sometimes you say to yourself: “Here we go”. We are in fact there.
You say that with a smile, do you still have hope?
Yes, because, it’s like the Covid, not everyone is going to catch it. It’s going to be a sort of big lottery, but things are going to happen because we did not take the right paths on a lot of ground and it will have to be resolved, it will go through serious things. Everyone is aware of this. We have been told for twenty years that there are going to be floods, forest fires, that these changes of a few degrees have consequences. Here we are and it won’t stop. But the coming generations don’t think like us, don’t want the same things, are more aware of what needs to be done to make it more enjoyable.
This brings us back to “L’Avenir”, title of the album and of a song by Serge Lama. How did this song come to you?
I wasn’t expecting it. I was very surprised. This is the first song that Calogero made me listen to. I loved it, in my vocal niche, we can only love the soaring. I said to Calo: “I don’t know who the kid is who wrote this somewhat naive and utopian text, but it gives you so much hope and it’s so simple that I like it. “There, he looks at me and answers:” You know that the kid is Serge Lama? Well, it’s even better because, when you still have this vision of things after 70 years, it’s beautiful and it gives hope. I was amazed and amazed.
Conversely, Barbara Pravi, 28, is the youngest pen on the album …
I knew her three years ago, she was my first act. Calo asked him for a text on this album. When she gets home is a wonderful song that unfolds like a movie. She also came to give us a hand on New dreams. There are artists like her, like Anne Sila, who interest me. They have a place to take, they are beautiful, interesting, they are made for that. Barbara Pravi sings, has a charisma, a repertoire and it becomes more and more precise. His title for Eurovision is terrible, I love it. It makes you want to listen to more.
In November, on the occasion of your 60th birthday, you begin your tour. Are you going to avoid nostalgia here too?
I’m not going to avoid it no. I made about twenty albums. A concert is about twenty songs. It’s not hard: you take the iconic song from each album. Let’s unroll the photo album! My audience is my age, sometimes a little older, it will make them happy to remember all that. I went even further on the musicians side, I warned them: we won’t do a special version. Because, at each show, when we re-orchestrate, there is always this reflection that comes up on the public side: “I prefer the record. ” They’re right ! They’ve been listening to it at home for so many years. I will therefore apply my motto: “Easy and pleasant”. In addition, my arrangements have not aged.
Your tour starting in November, does that mean that you will not be able to coach in the next season of “The Voice”?
Imagine that they are trying to find space in my schedule. So it’s not open yet because it’s a bit complicated, but it’s not closed. I have a break between December 16 and January 22 where, normally, I go to Argentina. But they are watching. I am in my element at The Voice, this family is too nice, it works really hard. When it’s that good and you receive it that way, you’d have to be a snob not to do it. So if we find the space for me to coach next season, no problem. I may not do it again later, I will integrate it into the page that I will turn.
Do you have “regrets to be satisfied”, as you sing in “L’Avenir”?
No, that is more to generalize in the text so that everyone can navigate.
And remorse?
No, because I never did anything wrong. All I could do wrong was never mean, it was all bullshit, but stupid bullshit, as they say. It was more for fun, because what I like is cracking my mouth and laughing. Considering what happened to me and the way I deal with everything that happens to me, I can’t regret a thing. As I sing it in Instinct : “Either I win or I learn”. Success goes quickly and you don’t necessarily remember a lot. Failure, you remember a lot (he bursts out laughing).