Vianney is the special guest of Le Monde d’Élodie. The opportunity to look back on five highlights of his life with five songs from his repertoire taken from his four albums, including the latest, released on November 10, 2023, which contains duets and trios: At 2 to 3In less than ten years, he has established himself on the French music scene with songs that celebrate love, separation, family, nostalgia, the seasons, solitude, but all systematically with a smile.
His titles Not there, I’m leaving, Veronica, Father-in-law or his collaborations with Gims on the title The same or with Ed Sheeran on Call On Mehave already been incorporated into all the playlists. A journey marked by numerous awards such as the latest, in 2024, that of male artist of the year at the Victoires de la musique. Put away from concerts for the moment, the one who likes to live in osmosis with his audience and the artists who are part of his circle reveals himself.
franceinfo: Two elements seem to be your energy: music and writing. At what point did you discover that music was going to be part of your life?
Vianney: Very young, because music is part of millions of people’s lives. I didn’t know it would be a job. I understood it late. My first memories, my first pleasures, in real life, that I remember, it’s the music in the car, it was: “Please turn on the music!“And I know that it made me feel good. So, at that moment, I understand that all my life, I will have that, for sure, but like a lot of people. There are people who take it easy on the weekend, they just listen to music, it makes their weekend and that’s the power of music. It’s not necessarily about making it.
“What matters is not writing songs or having a career, what matters is leaving a place for music if it is present in our lives.”
It must be said that at home, your dad played Brassens with his guitar that you quickly misused. When you look closely, it’s incredible what your parents passed on to you.
I owe them a lot, but I tell them all the time. I try to be grateful, but it’s never enough. Now that I have a son, everyone tells me that the first years determine the rest and I believe it.
This is also why you wanted to put your stage career aside for the moment.
Yes, the tour takes me too far from home. It’s a sacrifice of time and energy that is enormous. Then, you’re jet-lagged because on tour, you go to bed at four in the morning and when you have a baby, you get up at four. Physically, it was too hard, not compatible and above all, when you have a child, you have to be there. We count a lot on women for that, but dads are important. Obviously, I try to be there.
The starting point is that you play with friends on Sundays and there is one of your friends who is already convinced that you have a place in this world and who plays a demo to the person who will become your manager.
Yes, this story is funny because in fact, my manager, at the time, worked in advertising and she was looking for a voice for an ad. He made her listen to my voice saying: “He has a weird voice and it can do something“…
There are vibratos in your voice, there is a kind of vocal arpeggio.
There you go. He makes you listen to that and then at that moment, she decides to become a manager and then little by little, she changes her life and we have lived wonderful years.
The first title you published, in 2014, was I hate youwhich starts from a feeling of anger and sadness, it’s linked to your ex-girlfriend, and the audience will get hooked. Is this song the starting point?
Yes. It’s the first title we released. If you talk to young talents, to beginners, we have one thing in common, we act smart, we have our universe, our thing, but still, the first feedback is so important, so expected, we hope for it. We hope that one day, we’ll have more than ten feedbacks, maybe a hundred, even 1,000 feedbacks on what we do. It’s the dream. I dreamed of that. I dreamed of having just one feedback on what I was doing. I only had my manager, my family and my producer, so it was a bit light to really form an opinion of what I was doing.
“‘I Hate You’ was dizzying because it was the first time I had any feedback on my music.”
So there was I hate you on anger and then this feeling of lack with Not there. I will always remember the emotion that this song gave off and that you managed to communicate to us. Did you feel that too?
Oh yes. The songs make me feel good when I write them. In addition, with these first songs, there was still something that I will not be able to reproduce anymore, it is that I really wrote them without imagining that they would be published. I really did it for me, to make me feel good. And there, when I wrote Not thereI was a student in England. My room was eight square meters and I wrote lots of songs in there, for me and my English friends. They asked me to play them, but they didn’t understand anything, they were just happy. It calmed me down. And inevitably, when I present them to people, even today, it always allows me to exorcise something that is sometimes painful, in any case, forever present. So, when I sing, there is an emotion that comes back.