Lara Fabian is the special guest on Le Monde d’Élodie all this week. Five days to talk about her 30-year career with its highs, but also its lows. The one that the French saw arrive from Quebec in the 1990s with a powerful voice that touches the heart, has become, over the course of her 16 albums, an artist who counts in both French-speaking and English-speaking countries. It is without filter that she opens up by evoking bits of her story, memories of life around her songs which have become cult such as: I love you, Adagio, I Will Love Again, I still believe in, Immortal, You are my other, Humana or The difference. She returns on her meeting with the boss, Johnny Hallyday, who gave her confidence, on her vocation to pass on what she learned to others and then above all she underlines the importance of a feeling which warms closed hearts: empathy.
For three decades, Lara Fabian has never stopped shedding light on life, with its joys and sorrows, pages that turn and adventures that begin, to her precious audience. As a prelude to the release of a 17th album planned for the end of 2024, she offered us in January 2024 the single Your pain written and composed with Slimane and confirms that a tour is coming.
franceinfo: Adoption was almost immediate as soon as your first album came out. 30 years later, sales have not dropped, and concert halls are full at every concert. What is your relationship with this audience that considers you as one of their family members?
Lara Fabian : A relationship of gratitude and love, infinite love, renewed love with everything that makes love magical. We don’t really know why we love or are loved. We don’t really know why it’s so strong. We don’t really know why we are so attached to each other. And that’s what, in my opinion, creates the magic.
After the first album, Lara Fabian (1991), then Carpe Diem (1994) and Pure (1996), your fate is sealed. Do you lose your footing at that moment?
So I lose my footing more when I start to cross over to the international side, where I sign in the United States. There is an album in English coming out and somewhere, culturally, even if it is part of my dream, I will move away. So, I do not lose my footing only because of the conditions in which, when you are not equipped, you experience success, that is a first part, it is true. But I will lose my footing because of the speed of things. I will lose the meaning, the taste for things. And I will be saved by a family and a few exceptional women who will have really kept me going to get through these 15 years.
In Purethere were so many hits. You flooded the airwaves, you were everywhere, on television, in all the media. I wondered how you managed to keep this necessary perspective, your feet on the ground…
I didn’t get there. I let myself get caught up in the consequences. So, some people get caught up in changing their point of view, their identity, they change completely. I didn’t do that because I was really very anchored in my culture, in the essentials too. And precisely, I had the vital need to come back to it to understand what really made sense to me.
How did your parents experience that moment?
With a lot of pain. Because in fact, the consequences we are talking about are a bit like finding yourself in front of the giant that propels us and then in front of the giant that takes us and crushes us. I really experienced both.
“Everything that resonated in people’s hearts, and made me a beloved artist, also became the reason why I was truly hated.”
Lara Fabianto franceinfo
Afterwards, the good news is that I never created a lukewarm feeling and that it is true that it was: either people loved, they embraced 360 degrees what I was, or 360 degrees, I was decried for what I am, not what I was.
Did it affect you that people could say bad things about you, that people could make fun of you?
When it was really very cruel, yes. Today, it makes me smile because I see myself reacting to things that seemed so unfair to me. It was so not who I am. There were also a lot of lies that were told, about who I am, about what my posture was. I had no posture, in fact. At one point, I slipped because it was incredibly hectic. And then I did the best I could to get back up. But when your voice is affected, when what defines you is your voice and that has been deeply loved and at the same time, it is what is deeply hated, you don’t understand. There is a kind of internal rupture that occurs.
Exactly, what is your relationship with your voice? It doesn’t move, it’s a lot of work.
My voice is evolving. It is very intimate. It is reconciled with its strength. I am very in tune with all its softness and all its velvet.
“At one time, I had an urgency to say things in a certain way and I think my intensity was very disturbing.”
Lara Fabiento franceinfo
I believe that what I needed to say with this strength and integrity could radiate something that mirrored the other with an unbearable intensity. I am aware of that. Nevertheless, I was sincere. That’s it, that could not be reproached to me.
What is the song on the album? Pure which marked you the most and which is really a photo from that period?
For me, it’s The difference. After AllAfter I love you who needs no introduction, who follows me, even precedes me in all the countries of the world where I go to sing in French, The differenceit’s something that will crystallize what I have to say. For me, the subject is the fear that prevents us from recognizing the dimension of what love can be and therefore all the dimensions that love can take. And what touches me the most in this song is not so much how it is written or what it says, it’s what it has done to people, it’s what remains of The difference. It’s that even today, it’s perhaps one of the songs that people talk to me about the most as having been the element of transformation in the lives of a lot of people, families, people in the community who used it as a shield or a banner. When, as a songwriter, we can make sense, it’s the greatest gift that the public can give us.