If you buy me a drink, Friendship, Tenderness… When you look at the songs chosen by Renaud for his new album, in stores this Friday, it’s hard not to realize that the almost 70-year-old singer has decided to favor certain themes such as love and friendship. Two very important values in his life, two driving forces that drive him forward even if he is no longer naive about them, as he confided to the Parisian during a long interview.
“We have disappointments in both“, he explains, now jaded. “Friendship is fragile and love impossible. Love, we’re going straight into the wall“. A rather pessimistic vision for the one who has been in a relationship with Romane Serda for a long time, in particular, but which he simply explains by several couple misadventures: “I regularly fall in love with impossible love, married woman, faithful woman…“.
Especially since around him, the entourage is gradually shrinking: “Many friends have left, actor Philippe Bruneau, singer Johnny Clegg, my older brother Thierry… But I still have producer Gilbert Rozon“, he explains, confident that he has “reconciled with Françoise Hardy“, from which he takes one of the most beautiful songs (Friendship) in this new opus.
“It’s an icon. At one time, we were angry. She had made borderline FN remarks in a musical review. I had given him a rather scathing right of reply. We were a bit cold for a while but we made up. I love it“, he concludes. A rediscovered friendship which does not prevent him from bonding with other singers of the new generation.
If he is “not a fan“rap, music to which he”don’t cling“, he would like “make a duet with Angèle” and was very touched to attend the covers of his songs by other performers during the television program which was dedicated to him and which will be broadcast on May 10 on France 2, on the eve of his 70th birthday.
“I liked seeing Calogero perform ‘Pierrot’, Joyce Jonathan cover the little-known ‘Coeur perdu’, the children’s choir on ‘Mistral Gagnant’… When Zaz sang ‘Petite conne’, about a girl who died of a overdose, I shed my tear“, he told the Parisian. A show that promises to be all in tenderness, perhaps in the company of his two children, Lolita and Malone, and which will show a facet of Renaud that we adore!