Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the author, composer and performer Étienne Daho. He has just released his 14th album, “Shooting the Night on the Stars”.
Étienne Daho has been part of our lives for 42 years and he has become one of our family members with this recognizable voice from the first words. This so familiar vocal imprint that sometimes made us want to move, sometimes to travel, sometimes to cry, sometimes to laugh or even to shout. Each of his songs has become a memory and over time, he has become a text obsessive with a sharp pen, precise in the accuracy of the feelings evoked.
>> Franceinfo document: behind the scenes of Etienne Daho’s 14th album
He has just released a new album full of emotions, Shooting the stars at night. An album dedicated to amorous passion, sensual, sometimes torrid, in a totally uninhibited way. The couple is at the center of this album with the tumultuous romance of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra in the background. A destructive passion that he was able to recreate with the complicity of Vanessa Paradis.
franceinfo: This 14ᵉ album confirms that each time you push your limits. You decide to leave your comfort zone. Is it necessary for you to force yourself not to repeat what you have already proposed?
Etienne Daho: It’s kind of natural for me to try to make a different record each time. In any case different from the previous one. And this one, God knows it is different from the previous one! It’s almost natural. It’s because I think I was at the end of a sonic style on a record and I want to move on. I want to explore things that I haven’t done yet or have done before but want to do again.
What place does this music occupy in your life?
It is the absolute. It’s really what makes me breathe. It has always been like this. I believe that a few hours after I was born, it was folded. I am made like this.
We felt that this album was different from the others. There is a link and a link with the work that you have already been able to accomplish. There are in this album The note, the note (1984) there is also Eden (1996), from Bodies and weapons (2000). What state of mind were you in when The note, the note is out ? It was a tidal wave. Weekend in Rome is probably the song that sticks to your skin the most.
Yes, strangely, because it’s not the best. It’s not the one that worked best.
“The success of ‘Week-end à Rome’ always amazes me because it is entirely light, the text and the music are a bubble of lightness.”
Etienne Dahoat franceinfo
I was a student coming out of college, arrived in Paris and here I was successful. It was like an unexpected and huge gift. And it was a game. It amused me a lot. I didn’t take it seriously at all, well, I did things seriously, but success for me wasn’t a serious thing at all.
Do you realize that you have been with us for 42 years, that you are in the hearts of the French? Does it affect you?
Yes, it’s a gift. It’s every artist’s dream to last. It’s true that hatching, when you appear, isn’t that it’s easy, but there’s a kind of novelty effect, there’s something that suddenly flows naturally . If we arrive at the right time, if we have the right face, the right song. And then after lasting, it becomes a much more interesting sport, more difficult, but more exciting.
Do you learn to keep your feet on the ground and have your head in the stars?
Yes, I think so. So do I have my head in the stars? Maybe not yet. Do I have my feet on the ground? Maybe not too much either.
There’s a kind of quest actually in everything you’ve been doing from the beginning, in these 13 albums.
I have always wanted to have a good life. My intuition told me that the good life went through music because it was my way of expressing myself, the most spontaneous, the simplest and that I perhaps had difficulty communicating what I felt and only through music, it was easy.
You say that some people imagine you to be fragile. It’s not so much that they imagine you to be fragile, but with a sensitivity on edge. Is it hard to live to have this sensitivity there or not?
So sometimes I feel like I have no skin, I’m transfixed by everything that’s going on. But it allows me to write songs, it allows me to feel, to perceive things that maybe the average person doesn’t perceive, that it protects them more, perhaps.
And you ?
Me, it does not protect me at all. I am in constant danger.
So you are Boyfriend, you are a little bad boy too from time to time thanks to writing. The album ends on The unfinished novel. Does that mean that each finished page gives way to a new blank page that only asks for one thing and that is to be blacked out?
Yes, and since it’s a song that closes the album, it’s an open question and an opening, which ends on the beach. I like this idea that there is a sequel, but the sequel, I don’t know.
We know her. It will be a tour!
Yes, it’s true.
“When we made an album like ‘Tirer la nuit sur les étoiles’, we really wanted to play it on stage.”
Etienne Dahoat franceinfo
I really like the scene. I was born on stage at the Transmusicales. It was my first contact with music. Let’s say that I started with the boards and it’s something that I like a lot and that I learned to like too over time, more and more.
Étienne Daho starts a tour on November 4, 2023 in Caen. It will be, for example, the 7th in Nantes, the 10th in Toulouse, the 25th in Aix-en-Provence, the 5th of December in Lille, the 15th in Rennes and the 22nd in Paris.