Patrick Benguigui (b. 1959-) was born in Tlemcin, Algeria (part of France until 1962) of Jewish Algerian parents. His father Pierre Benguigui and his berber mother Augusta Kammoun, both teachers, divorced the year after he was born. For professional reasons he eventually took the stage name Bruel (often mistakenly thought to have been inspired by Jacques Brel). In 1962 following Algerian independence, when he was three years old, his mother moved with him to Argenteuil outside Paris where she took a teaching position and eventually married a doctor and had two sons (surname Moreau). Over the years, inspired by his mother’s record collection, he acquired skills with piano and guitar.
The Many Faces of Patrick Bruel
Bruel gives new meaning to the characterization “jack of all trades” (for his 60th birthday, a 2019 French TV documentary was titled “Patrick Bruel: Itinéraire d’un surdoué”). His accomplishments range from acting in scores of films and television productions to ranking as one of the most popular French singers, and avocations like football (soccer), poker (1998 World Series of Poker (WSOP) winner with nearly 2 million dollars of lifetime winnings as of 2024) and more recently “vigneron” with his ownership of the “Domaine de Leos” vineyard and olive grove (named after his sons Léon and Oscar) near L'Isle sur la Sorgue in the Vaucluse.
Besides weaving such varied avocations into his life trajectory, his music over the years traced an itinerary through diverse genres like pop, rock, and “chanson.” His aspiration to be a singer emerged early at a 1975 concert by Michel Sardou at the Olympia music hall in Paris. During a formative two-year sojourn in New York (1979-81) when 20 years old, he became saturated in American music culture. While there, he met Gérard Presgurvic who became a primary songwriter and led to the beginning of his career in “chanson” in the early 1980s.
After a mostly inconsequential first album in 1982 (“Vide”), Bruel’s second album released in 1989 (“Alors regarde”) unleashed a phenomenon of “Bruelmania,” or massive adulation by fans (mostly teenage, female). That album birthed four signature songs: “Casser la voix,” “J'te l'dis quand même,” “Alors regarde,” and “Place des grands hommes.” Fans at concerts adopted a habit of singing along with glowing lighters. At at least one concert, to his apparent amazement, fans sang an entire song. He was selected “Male artist of the year” in 1992 (“Victoires de la musique”). Between 1987 and 2022, he released 22 albums including 11 studio albums and 11 live concert albums. Bruel and Amanda Sthers (born Queffélec-Maruani, writer, scenarist and director) met in St. Tropez in 2001, married in 2004, and had two sons but divorced in 2007.
Much of Bruel’s repertoire carries an autobiographical and/or nostalgic quality that tracks his evolution over the years from teenage heart-throb to rock and finally mature “chanson.” The song “Qui a le droit” (1991) includes knowing reference to a fatherless child. Bruel’s own father abandoned the family when Patrick was one year old, an event Bruel acknowledges bore formative consequences. “Place des grands hommes” (1991) recalls moments as a student at the Lycée Henri Quatre. His double studio album Entre Deux (2002) includes covers of classic songs from the period between the two world wars, mostly sung as duets with established stars like Charles Aznavour, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Renaud, and Francis Cabrel. The title Entre Deux of that album earns points as a triple word-play with the phrase Entre Deux referring to the two-disk set, duet performances, and two world wars. The song “Je reviens” (2022) is a personalized account, addressed to his mother, of Bruel’s return for the first time with her to his homeland of Algeria. As a youth, Bruel developed an attachment to the music of French singer and actress Barbara, who died in 1997. Twenty years later, he devoted an entire hommage concert tour and albums to covers of Barbara’s songs. His 8th studio album in 2015, “Très souvent, je pense à vous,” included covers of 15 Barbara songs. His 9th live album in 2016 “Bruel Barbara-Le Châtelet” included 24 songs from his Barbara tour and keynote concert at Paris’s Le Châtelet in June that year.
Bruel’s voice has a mellow timbre and he cultivates an intimate relationship with concert audiences, which he regularly engages in song. He gets mileage from his good looks, warm personality and energetic performances. His songs generally observe standard poetic structure and build on accessible but infectious melodies. Instrumentation that is limited to piano and strings, whether he plays or is accompanied, keeps the spotlight on him, his songs and their message.
Patrick Bruel’s songs are often populated by a more obvious use of word “elision” than most other songs. He occasionally sings softly and elides or drops words, which can challenge comprehension. Unlike English, where elision is optional, French requires “élision” in certain circumstances. Bruel’s usage extends beyond those requirements, so it requires mention.
Elision is the contraction of two words to make pronunciation quicker, smoother and easier. It occurs typically when a first word ends in a vowel and a second word also begins in a vowel (or a silent “h”). The last vowel is dropped from the first word and replaced by an apostrophe (‘) and the two words are pronounced as one.
In Bruel’s case, some of his elisions are of the required type, but some are optional (“élision facultative”) and give a “slurred” quality to speech which is not unusual in spoken language. For example, his use of “je t'aime” is a normal (required) elision that eliminates the awkward spoken hiatus that would otherwise occur between “te” and “aime.” When he writes “j'te l'dis,” however, it represents an optional and somewhat forced contraction of words that are actually difficult to speak together. Bruel also seems to “drop” some words when it is convenient to fit them into the melody. One suspects that the optional elisions and word dropping are intentional and designed to give a certain quality or dramatic effect to the language, perhaps one of colloquial informality.
His lyrics focus on issues of widespread relevance like friendship (“Place des grands hommes”), love ("J'te l’dis quand même"), and individuality and self-affirmation (“Qui a le droit...”) as well as topical social and political matters. His stance against far-right, racist and anti-immigration politics, for example, earned attacks by Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. He has been an active member of the French charitable organization "Les Enfoirés."
Bruel’s latest tour of nearly 100 concerts closed in December 2024 at the Zénith in Toulouse, to be followed in March 2025 with a cinema projection of the concert at 250 cinemas throughout France.
Patrick Bruel Songs
The songs in this selection date from the period of Bruel’s apex popularity in the early nineties.
Place des grands hommes (“Place of great men”), 1989
J’te l’dis quand même (“I’m telling you anyway”), 1990
Qui a le droit... (“Who has the right...”), 1991