Jeanne Mas celebrates 40 years of career at the Casino de Paris

Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Wednesday January 10, 2024: the author, composer, performer and writer, Jeanne Mas. After the release of the album “Phosphore”, she will be on stage at the Casino de Paris next February to celebrate her 40th career.

Jeanne Mas is a singer and writer. It was in Italian that she took her first steps in music, with a first 45 rpm entitled On The Moon in 1978. The revelation and then the consecration took place in France in 1984, with the song Very first time. Then, she continues the hits with Johnny, Johnny, which will be ranked number 1 in the Top 50 in 1985. Taken from his first eponymous album, this title will also be recognized by two Victoires de la Musique. But when we say “Jeanne Mas”, we obviously think of the emblematic In red and black. To celebrate her 40 years of career, Jeanne Mas released a new album last May, Phosphorus, and she will take the stage of the Casino de Paris on February 15, 16 and 17.

franceinfo: What do these four decades spent alongside us and on stage remind you of?

Jeanne Mas: What I will remember from these 40 years of songs are my meetings and collaborations with artists like Daniel Balavoine, Michel Berger, Johnny Hallyday, Alain Souchon, Serge Gainsbourg. This is what I keep as a gift for me. And of course, the meeting with my fans, with the public, which means that even today, I can offer new releases, new albums. These are the two wonderful things in my life.

When the concert dates at the Casino de Paris came out, there was a little text that accompanied it in which you said: “Not too old, not too tired, but a little tired of being stuck in the glorious past of the 80s“. What do you mean ?

For 40 years, I proposed new ideas that went almost unnoticed. It was only my fans who went there, not because it was of less good quality, but because ultimately, people, when they saw me again, really wanted to talk about those 80s again and forgot that I existed in the moment.

“I’m really in the present moment. Being constantly projected into these 80s, which were years of glory of course, but which also brought me a lot of sadness with the departures of Balavoine and Coluche , it still upsets me today.”

I said to myself: I have no existence and you can’t summarize 40 years of songs with four or five hits. I felt like I wanted to offer more and that I wasn’t allowed to offer more. That’s what ultimately disturbed me a little.

When you look closely, your texts have not aged a bit. In red and black shows how far ahead you were already even on this notion of emancipation. What does this song mean to you?

It’s true that it’s a song that, even today, can resonate in people’s heads because: “If I had been advised, I would have made fewer mistakes“, it’s so right in my life and it’s so right in other people’s lives, in fact, it’s a song that will be timeless because it’s a life experience.

You also say: “I will exile my fears“. Do these fears still exist today?

I have a lot less fears than in the 80s or when I was young, of course, because maturity, experience means that I have gotten rid of lots of things, or I have faced them, or I have exceeded.

“I have never been fragile, but I have often been sensitive. And we carry on our shoulders the weight of a childhood, of a life which are sometimes blockages as an adult. That’s all that that we must know and learn to overcome.”

What made you unique is precisely that you claim your difference, your originality, that you want to preserve it. What were you like as a child?

I don’t know. I don’t like the word “submissive”, but I never wanted to disappoint my parents. That’s it, that was mostly it. But in fact, when we never want to disappoint, we keep a frustration within ourselves which is very painful. That’s also why I left my family home, it wasn’t really a home…

“I left for Italy at 17. I needed to live my life, to explore the world. I am extremely curious about the world and above all, I did not want to have a mediocre life.”

I gave my life a meaning that delighted me and uplifted me.

The first track that opens the album PhosphorusIt is : Nothing and nobody. You say there that no one, ultimately, can really understand what we experience, what we endure. It means that you have this strength to build yourself, to trust yourself first.

In this album, there are above all stories, love stories that go wrong and it’s true that in Nothing and nobody, it is the dismay of the one we never hear, who we do not see and who dies of love. And in fact, rather than dying, he will kill the one who does not look at him, who does not see him and who betrayed him. I believe that sometimes lack of love leads to madness.

Watch this interview on video: