Florent Pagny (1961-) is not a name that rolls off the tongue of most non-French people, but he is one of the best-selling vocal artists in France. Born in Burgundy (Chalon-sur-Saône) and vocally precocious, Florent left school at 16 and moved to Paris working odd jobs and pursuing vocal studies at the Conservatoire de Levallois-Perret (Maurice Ravel). He began his career as an actor in films and TV and subsequently as a singer-songwriter.
Much of Pagny's history is populated with “colorful” incidents, including a “toxic” relationship from 1982-85 with actress Patricia Millardet (4 years his senior), a subsequent 3-year affair (1988-91) with 15-year-old singer/actress Vanessa Paradis (11 years his junior), a combative relationship with the press, and persistent efforts to avoid French taxation. In 2005, he was convicted of tax fraud in France and fined 15,000 euros.
His personal style also attracted attention, including antique motorcycle collecting and restoration, his sartorial (camouflage) selections, and (expatriate) residential choices. His exceptional 6-octave “baryton-Martin” voice (a light and bright vocal range adjacent to tenor, named after French singer Jean-Blaise Martin, 1768-1837) set him apart and led him to dabble in opera . After 1997, he and his Argentine partner (wife after 2006) Azucena Caamaño and their two children divided their lives between living in France and on a large Patagonian ranch in Argentina, and eventually in Portugal. To some extent, these living circumstances arose from efforts to avoid multipronged French taxation on inheritance, wealth, and income. Azucena is a former model and artist (painter) who contributed artwork for album and disk covers for some of Florent’s early releases. She is widely credited with setting him on his feet after a financial and emotional rough patch during the early 1990s. They met in 1992, moved to Patagonia in 1997, had two children (boy Inca, 1996; girl Aël, 1999) and married in 2006. Since 2013, she developed a cosmetic and wellness products company (“Rosazucena”) based on rosehips (“La Rosa Mosqueta”) from Patagonia.
While bartending and acting in TV and bit film parts in Paris, Pagny befriended French artistic agent Dominique Besnehard, who helped him find roles and a record contract. His first song, “N’importe quoi” (featured below), recorded as a single in 1987 and issued by Philips Records, was an anti-drug anthem inspired by a friend. It launched at 48th in the French top-50 singles chart and finished with 8 weeks as the top song in France. Pagny composed the music and wrote the lyrics with Marion Vernoux, a director and screenwriter who co-directed the music video for the song. It was followed by “Laissez-nous respirer” in 1988, which he wrote, and his first album, “Merci” in 1990 for which he wrote most of the songs with collaborators. His breakup with Vanessa Paradis in 1991 threw him into a depression that disrupted his career for several years.
Gradually, Pagny’s portfolio shifted from the self-composed and written pieces of the early years to compilations of songs generated by others and re-makes of earlier works. By 1995, his album “Bienvenue chez moi” was mostly a compilation of earlier works by Pagny and others. Shortly after, he decided to discontinue composing songs altogether but to continue as a performer. His first album following this decision, his fourth studio album in 1997 “Savoir Aimer,” included 11 titles written exclusively by a variety of other songwriters, including two that are featured below. Its huge success brought him an award in 1998 at the annual “Victoires de la Musique” as best male artist of the year. His fifth album “Re-Creation” in 1999 was a double CD of cover versions of classic “chanson” recordings.
In later years, Pagny engaged in wide range of diverse professional activities. Since his voice was his main asset, leveraging it across various delivery platforms was a reasonable approach. His singing repertoire expanded by contributions from other composers, lyricists and performers who not only provided material but collaborated in album compilations. Over time, this roster grew to include Jean-Jacques Goldman (aka Sam Brewski), Pascal Obispo, Lionel Florence, Erick Benzi, Jacques Veneruso, Daran and many others.
In 2001, he released an album of duets named “2,” a very successful album in 2003 (“Ailleurs land”) that included a screed against taxation (“Ma Liberté de pensée”), a 2004 album of famous opera songs (“Baryton”) which he took on tour across France with a full orchestra, covers of Jacques Brel songs (“Pagny chante Brel,” 2007), several albums of Spanish language songs, and a 2018 album of classic French “chansons” (“Tout simplement”). He served as a coach on “The Voice: La Plus Belle Voix,” a TV singing competition from its beginning in 2012, and he battled recurrent bouts of lung cancer. Tours and performances generated “halo” effects with an extensive repertoire of covers of classic “chanson” icons like Piaf, Brel, Bécaud, Ferré, Aznavour and others. As recently as 2023, his album “2bis” (a knock-off of the 2001 album “2”) was the 8th best-selling album in France with 20 of his own and standard French songs, all duets by Pagny and other artists.
Notes on Florent Pagny Songs
We feature a quartet of Pagny songs. Each is a little jewel in its own way (content, melody, lyrics, structure, rhyme). Pagny himself wrote his first song “N’importe quoi,” while Pascal Obispo and Lionel Florence wrote music and lyrics for the others: “Savoir aimer,” “Chanter” and “Et un jour une femme.” These three musicians clearly shared stylistic affinities as well as personal friendships. The songs embody a classic structure of: verses, chorus, outro; short couplets; verbal succinctness, and clear rhyming.
One of the signature motifs with Obispo/Florence songs is the generous repetition of specific turns of phrase, which serves as a “binder” for an entire song and thereby conveys a uniform sensibility. The use of verb infinitives as nouns is one of these traits. Two of the three Obispo/Florence songs on our list have titles that consist exclusively of verb infinitives: “Savoir aimer” and “Chanter.” While verb infinitives are normally translated literally with “to” (as in “To know, to love” and “To sing”), the French language often uses infinitives directly as nouns. When the English language uses a verb as a noun, it is called a gerund and “-ing” is appended to the root of the verb. Therefore, “Savoir aimer” becomes in English translation “Knowing how to love” and “Chanter” becomes “Singing.” Gerunds generally describe activities and this sense of activity carries through into the music of these songs with an upbeat tempo. In “Savoir aimer,” such gerund-like verb infinitives occur 62 times. The phrase “et s’en aller” (“Leaving”) also recurs 6 times as a key theme throughout “Savoir aimer.” It not only rhymes with “Savoir aimer,” but its meaning (“leaving”) initially appears paradoxical as an ingredient of “knowing how to love.”
The song “Chanter” has 13 lines that begin with the word “pour” and endow the entire song with a purposeful tone. In “Et un jour une femme,” 4 of the first 11 lines in the song begin with either “d’avoir” or “d’être” followed by a past participle. This conveys a strong sense of “over and done,” thereby setting the scene for the song's transformational depiction of a woman's love. This song also includes recurrent use (10 times) of the phrase “Jusqu'au bout de” that conveys an unavoidable sense of extenuating effort and devotion by the “femme” in question.
“N’importe quoi” (Anything), 1987
“Savoir aimer” (Knowing How to Love), 1997
“Chanter” (Singing), 1997
"Et un jour une femme" (One day a woman), 2000