It was almost called “Oser Bashung”. The very large audience joined by Isabelle Boulay might not have grasped the link, not seen the wink. For people who have followed the handsome man with the profile of an eagle, as soon as this voice resounds like no other, the reference is obvious: we are sent back to Dare Josephinethe title track from the 1991 album, which also included the essential lady dream.
Madame Boulay, dream come true? Isabelle Boulay loves two songsamong the ten of his double-capped album: THEpleasure horses. Boulay sings Bashung. Pleasure horses? This is the line that comes just before the first chorus ofDare Josephine : “Just make neigh / The horses of pleasure / Dare dare Josephine / Dare dare Josephine”. Hearing Isabelle sing that, we inevitably say to ourselves: she dared. Dared, dared, Isabelle. The informative part, Boulay sings Bashung, it is the clear idea that binds the initials. Initials BB, as Gainsbourg would say.
“During the pandemic, I was going around in circles, I was prancing around,” she says bluntly, her 18 Félix behind her in the office section of her studio, on the top row. Horses of momentumless pleasure. The horse is in the paddock, neighing without pleasure. Muzzled, muzzled, Isabelle. “We had a fairly clear brake. It was driving me crazy. Do not sing in front of people. I had never needed breath so much, higher than higher aspirations, a somewhat unimaginable project that would take me out of myself. I didn’t want to let myself grow old… I’ve been a grown-up for so long. At the same time as the pandemic, my mother was taken to a retirement residence. With my brother, we emptied the family home. I had time to think about the sequel. Where would I end up? »
I said to myself, what is the most demanding repertoire for me? Whose is the highest fence I could jump over? And I thought of Bashung. What if I offered myself Bashung? Go ahead, Isabelle, go ahead!
Nothing more forbid
On her 50th birthday, in July 2022, she had fun: lifted, forbidden. “I said to myself, what is the most demanding repertoire for me? Whose is the highest fence I could jump over? And I thought of Bashung. What if I offered myself Bashung? Go ahead, Isabelle, go ahead! »
She had been courting him in her head and heart ever since. Dare Josephine, exactly. Madame was dreaming. “I didn’t dare, I told myself that it wasn’t possible. That it wasn’t for me. For whom could it be Bashung, if not for Bashung? But in the state I was in in 2022, I really wanted something strong. Want to want, as Johnny sang. »
A performer in the full sense, she has sung the original material of a host of authors and composers, and revisited a number of repertoires: thematic albums (notably Songs for the winter months), tribute album (a Thank you Serge Reggiani well felt), in addition to lending itself to the show Symphonic Piaf, many collective events and duets galore. The great French (and Belgian) song, the Quebec song of all kinds, the Americana right up to Dolly Parton, it has raked in quite a wide area. But Bashung? Who imagined it at Bashung? Passing “from airlock to airlock”, toiling himself “to mess with him” as in I pass for a caravan ? These words and so many others, signed Jean Fauque, Gaëtan Roussel, Pierre Grillet, Doriand, Bashung himself, coming out of her? Naturally?
envy and encouragement
It took a Claude Larivée, who now manages it with Marie-Christine Champagne at La Tribu (even if his records remain under the Audiogram brand), to push it. “In my thanks, I call him Claude “not even afraid” Larivée. It was he who referred me to Gus van Go for production and mixing. Audacity meets audacity, why not? “At the point where I was, go for Gus, we tried. In the meantime, Dumas, who is at La Tribu and who is a real trippy, had traveled all over Bashung from top to bottom, taking notes. He filled a whole notebook with it, which he gave me: he was literally my expert-researcher. That’s the spirit at La Tribu. »
She ended up believing them: this project was not a whim of an interpreter in search of change. “Having the desire is good, but of course I had doubts afterwards. I have never felt so vulnerable. Was I going to be relevant? They didn’t doubt at all. “Total commitment, in the way of handsome madmen, veterans with a smirk, eternal kids. “I had to assume my desire. »
The Bashung Mystery
Still it was necessary, duty of interpreter, to speak Bashung fluently. A rich language that rides on meaning and enjoys liaisons, infatuated with rich rhymes from words never before spoken in song. A case. “I studied literature, but since I was trying to tell the musicians from Los Angeles that Gus had brought in, I didn’t understand much about it. There, it’s better, I asked questions to Jean Fauque, to Doriand. ” Did you know that At night I lie evokes the occupation of the Nazis, the Resistance? “I was seen in the Vercors / Bungee jumping / Amphora thief / At the bottom of the creeks”, it is not explicit at first sight. Nor to the hundredth. “I understood it was a song about lying, that’s all. »
Inevitably, the observation is obvious: deciphering the Bashung is a bit of a waste of time. Need the Enigma machine. “And that’s okay. The Bashung mystery remains. “She who has neither met him (“barely brushed past backstage”) nor seen him in a show (“I had tickets, but the shows had been canceled, he died just after, in March 2009”) says to herself maybe it’s “better that way”. Less marked. Greater freedom of manoeuvre.
Different and compatible
Unlimited freedom to be Isabelle Boulay. The fact is that we find the Isabelle Boulay that we know, a little less forward in the mix, in the middle of the guitars rather than in front. And we are surprised to hear notes that Bashung had suggested without leading them to their destination. And we celebrate an improbable but surprisingly compatible marriage between two beautiful bass timbres. At times, in no express Or Angorait follows the original inflections, to some extent less so: it is sung, even what was recited is sung (including the list of days of the week in my small business).
“I abandoned myself to his impossible phrasing. I dared. It’s the wildest part of me that sings. I listen to what we’ve done with amazement. It’s me, right? It’s her. Finding in Bashung a kind of posthumous lover, with whom the adventure is still possible. “He freed me. By myself. Of a certain perception of myself. I am mounted on the horses of pleasure: I can dare anything now. »