Singer Jean-Louis Murat died on Thursday May 25, Le Monde learned. He was 71 years old.
Born Jean-Louis Bergheaud on January 28, 1952, Jean-Louis Murat had recorded around twenty albums, including Dolorès, in 1996, Le Moujik et sa femme, in 2002 or A bird on a Pear in 2004. A best-of album by the artist, bringing together 20 of his most iconic tracks, is due out on Friday.
Recognizable by his blue eyes, his disheveled brown hair and his haunting voice, Jean-Louis Murat is inseparable from Puy-de-Dôme, where he has never stopped living. According to his former record company Pias, quoted by Agence France-Presse, it was at his home in Auvergne that he died.
“Sentiment Nouveau”, “Fort Alamo” “If I had to miss you”: his groove as well as his independence tinged with provocation made him a special artist in the French musical world.
Willingly provocative
The singer experienced the heights of the charts in 1991 thanks to a duet with Mylène Farmer (“Regrets”) but claims to have always experienced the “hit” as “a confinement”. “What I like is the song that becomes a hit, not the song that’s already a hit before people have heard it” because of a calibrated production, he told Agence France -Press in 2014.
Willingly provocative, had caused a scandal in his debut with “Suicidez-vous le peuple est mort”, some media fearing that this title was an incitement to suicide. The cover was signed by the photographer of the stars Jean-Baptiste Mondino. He will know his first commercial success at the end of the 80s with “If I had to miss you”.
In my albums, “I tell to the most infinite detail all my sentimental life, as since the beginning of my career”, he said, at more than 60 years old. Extremely prolific, he released almost one album a year in recent years.
