Marie Paule Belle celebrates 50 years of career with her new piano-vocal album and intimate concerts

Covid will have delayed the celebration of Marie Paule Belle’s half-century career by three years. The singer, pianist and composer, who became famous with her hit “La Parisienne”, will perform from January in Paris, and subsequently in the regions.

Too bad for the three years of delay due to the health crisis, Marie Paule Belle is celebrating her fifty years of career with a new album – released in November 2023 – which she recorded alone on the piano, and a series of intimate recitals in the first half of January in Paris, at the Passy theater, prelude to a regional tour. “I didn’t realize I’d been singing for so long… It’s a real surprise!” confides to AFP the singer with a chiselled repertoire, by turns serious and truculent, with sometimes crazy lyrics on melodies inspired by the classic, like her great success of 1976, The Parisian, which sounds like an opera buffa aria.

Awarded a Gold Record and co-written with the novelist Françoise Mallet-Joris, her partner who died in 2016, this song opened the charts and popular recognition to Marie Paule Belle, its refrain having remained engraved in memories: “I’m not Parisian/It bothers me, it bothers me/I’m not in the trend/It’s heartbreaking, it’s heartbreaking…”

“I feel like a dinosaur because I work in an artisanal way… I feel out of place, in no box or format”adds Marie Paule Belle, who will celebrate her 78th birthday on January 25.

“I pursued my career as if I were continuing my childhood game”

The one which began in 1970 at L’Écluse and L’Échelle de Jacob, legendary Parisian cabarets which have disappeared, where she met Barbara, Brel or Ferré, was revealed four years earlier by winning a competition on the radio, after having started the piano from the age of 3. To please her parents, Marie Paule Belle completed psychology studies and found herself in a human resources department: “I was very well paid. I arrived at 9 a.m.. I left at noon and never came back! That same evening, I sang at L’Échelle de Jacob for 8.50 francs!”

“I didn’t go to the conservatory. I read a score very badly. I know how to write a melody, but by ear”she confides. “I had the chance to pursue a career as if I were continuing my childhood game, with a form of innocence and pleasure intact.” Since her beginnings, Marie Paule Belle has set to music the texts of faithful lyricists including her childhood friend Michel Grisolia, Françoise Mallet-Joris and Serge Lama. She says she does violence by sometimes taking up the pen herself on some titles, ensuring that she had doubts for a long time when finding her words. “banal and not literary enough”.

A partly autobiographical album

His latest album, One evening among a thousand, brings together fifteen previously unpublished works, often autobiographical, funny or sentimental. For the first time, she recounts in song her meeting with Françoise Mallet-Joris: “In our glasses of wine/ Gevrey-Chambertin made us sway, that’s for sure/ Your voice, your mystery really captivated me/ Earthquake and upheaval…”

In the vein that made her popular, Marie Paule Belle talks imaginatively about sport: “When I see Alice, I do tennis/ With Elton, badminton/ When I see Chantal, I go horse riding/ With Ludo, I do judo and with Paul, antics…”

“I owe so much to Serge Lama, my pygmalion”

“I love that people laugh with my songs. What a gift to trigger smiles!” believes the singer, going from laughter to tears with her great friend Serge Lama for whom she opened. For this new album, he wrote the lyrics to The Shadow of his dog, poignant title about loneliness and pets.

“I owe so much to Serge Lama, my pygmalion. A form of loving friendship binds us. We laugh so much together!”she confides, “excited as a flea” at the idea of ​​returning to the stage. “Like the first time.”

Marie Paule Belle, One evening among a thousand (Universal/Pantheon)
In concert from April 4 to 14 at the Passy theater, in Paris