Florent Pagny: career, songs, cancer, couple, children… Quick bio

Florent Pagny is one of the most emblematic singers on the French scene from the 1990s to 2020…

Short biography of Florent Pagny – Florent Pagny has been part of the French musical landscape for over thirty years. Savoir aimer, Et un jour une femme, Ma liberté de ​​penser, or even Là où je t'emmènerai, several of his titles have become classics. In total, he has sold over 15 million records. Florent Pagny was born November 6, 1961 in Chalon-sur-Saône, in Saône et Loire. This is where he grew up, with his mother, Odile, a secretary, Jean, his father, who sells vignettes and his three brothers and sisters. Very early on, he developed a passion for music and decided, at only 16 years old, to leave his family to settle in Paris.

In the capital, Florent Pagny meets the famous showbiz headhunter, Dominique Besnehard. The latter offers him the chance to take his first steps in the cinema. He landed roles and played in La Balance by Bob Swaim, Fort Saganne by Alain Corneau and in Inspecteur Labavure by Claude Zidi. In 1987, Florent decided to turn to song. He wrote the song N’importe quoi, a manifesto against drugs. The 45 rpm record, produced by Gérard Louvin, was a huge success (1 million copies sold) and remained at the top of the top 50 for 26 weeks.

In 1988, Florent Pagny repeated the feat with his new 45, Laissez nous souffle. The following year, Florent Pagny won a music victory in the category of “Male Revelation of the Year”. In 1990, he released his first album, Merci. The singer was rewarded by a gold record with more than 100,000 copies sold.

However, the sudden fame, the money, his relationship with the young singer Vanessa Paradis and his title Presse qui roule, earned Florent Pagny a growing unpopularity with the media. He was boycotted for 4 years. In 1992, he released his second album, very autobiographical, Réaliste. The success is mixed and Florent Pagny is faced with personal and financial problems. The artist is at a low point.

Florent Pagny and Savoir Aimer

Rester vrai is Florent Pagny's third opus and places the year 1994 under the sign of regained peace. Jean-Jacques Goldman wrote to him Est-ce que tu me suis? and Si tu veux m’essaye, two huge successes. A year later, Bienvenue chez moi was released, a compilation containing three new tracks, including Bienvenue chez moi (1.5 million copies). In 1997, exiled In Patagonia in southern Argentina, the singer releases a new album, Knowing how to love. The signatures are prestigious.

We find, Erick Benzi, Zazie, Art Mengo, Pascal Obispo, Jacques Veneruzo, Jean-Jacques Goldman… Despite the artist's tax mishaps, the album is a commercial success with 1.4 million copies sold. Florent Pagny is logically rewarded of the music victory for Best Male Artist. Then came the albums, tours and changes of looks: Ré-création (1999), Châtelet les Halles (2000), 2 (2001), Ailleurs Land (2003), Baritone (2004) and Abracadabra (2006).

Rattrapé by the tax authorities, on January 27, 2005, Florent Pagny was sentenced to for tax fraud. In November 2007, the singer finally felt ready to perform. interpreting the one he considers to be a master, Jacques Brel. He chooses eleven songs from the Belgian singer's repertoire and delivers an opus that has the value of a self-portrait, Pagny sings Brel. The production is led by guitarist Daran and Yvan Cassar, a talented pianist and arranger. The singer interprets Brel with sobriety, accompanied by a philharmonic orchestra. To date, he has given a unique performance at The Olympia, December 1, 2007, in front of a captivated audience.

In 2010, Florent Pagny released the album Tout et son contraire in which he reunites Pascal Obispo with whom he sings a duet. In 2011, he went on an acoustic tour to celebrate his 50th birthday. In 2013, the single Les murs porteurs was released, the first single from the album Vieillir avec toi, composed entirely by Calogero. The album was certified diamond in July 2014.

Florent Pagny's troubles with the taxman

“Between taxes and me, “it doesn't start with a love story”, quips Florent Pagny in his autobiography entitled Pagny by Florent (Fayard) to be published on Wednesday, April 5, 2023, including BFMTVhas revealed several excerpts. In his book, the artist discusses his troubles with the tax authorities at length. “When I think that there are still people who imagine that I don't pay my taxes, or that I am against the principle of paying them… I want to tell them that nothing could be further from the truth,” Florent Pagny defends himself. When he encountered his first problems with the tax authorities in 1989, the artist explains that & At the time, he “didn't know anything about it.” “No one had ever told me what I had to do to get into the system. I never received a summons letter asking me for a declaration. I showed up spontaneously and I got screwed,” he says of this first regularization with the tax authorities.

But it was only three years later, in 1992, that his “first real dispute with the tax authorities” arose. Florent Pagny explains that the company Glem, run by Gérard Louvin, who was then in charge of its management, “had not declared the sums that they (had) “given” him. “Round sums,” adds the artist, who points out that it was the Glem company that had “taken care of declaring” his income until then. The artist was then faced with “an untenable situation.” “I had no more money, now I had something more: debts. “They are colossal,” writes Florent Pagny.

Another episode in Florent Pagny's troubles with the tax authorities: the seizure of the singer's assets in 2002, at the request of the tax authorities. As BFMTV recalls, this affair inspired the singer Pascal Obispo and the lyricist Lionel Florence, who wrote for Florent Pagny his emblematic title entitled My freedom to think. In his autobiography, the singer looks back on the outcry caused by this song in the political sphere. “I did not think that the song would trigger such a reaction in the ministry. She is still more ironic than mean, and above all so much less violent than what I experienced,” recalls Florent Pagny in his story.

A three-year love story with Vanessa Paradis

In his autobiography to be published on Wednesday, April 5, 2023, and of which BFMTVhas revealed several excerpts, Florent Pagny looks back on his love story with Vanessa Paradis. The two artists met in 1988, but Florent Pagny had not, at first, “paid her more attention than “that”. It was only a year later that they would begin their romance, which would last three years.

The singer tells in his book why he fell in love under the spell of the interpreter of Joe le taxi. “She has the crazy charisma of the very shy (the same as Johnny Hallyday). These people, as soon as they arrive somewhere, everyone wants to approach them, talk to them, be part of their lives, but they are so introverted”, writes Florent Pagny.

After three years of relationship, the two artists therefore separated. “I got out of the photo. Straight away!”, he recalls. Florent Pagny is also a bit bitter about the epilogue of this love story. “That's what I can blame him for at the end, because I was there so much for her, I worked so hard to fix everything that was messed up or unhealthy around her, and “it worked so well for her,” he wrote.

Who is Azucena Camano, Florent Pagny's wife ?

Florent Pagny met his wife almost thirty years ago. After his breakup with Vanessa Paradis, Florent Pagny met a 25-year-old Argentinian woman, Azucena Camano, at a dinner in 1993. The latter is a model, painter and creator of a brand of organic beauty products. Together, the couple have two children: Inca, born March 17, 1996 and Aë, born May 26, 1999.

Florent Pagny and Azucena Camano got married in 2006. The singer dedicated his album Vieillir avec toi to her. “We are a karmic couple”, Florent Pagny confided on the set of Laurent Delahousse's 8:30 p.m. Sunday. “Our destiny was to meet and accompany each other to come back from there where I was, at rock bottom and to surpass myself,” he added.

Although Florent Pagny is now married to his wife, their first meeting was not love at first sight. In his autobiography to be published on Wednesday, April 5, 2023, including BFMTVrevealed several excerpts, the singer says that he was immediately attracted to the young Argentinian woman when they met, but that this was not the case for Azucena Camano. “I found my hero. All the cards are against me. “We're going to have to fight for our love story to exist,” writes Florent Pagny in his autobiographical account of their first meeting. “My destiny is changing, I know it, I feel it, but I can see that Azucena doesn't know,” he continues.

Inca and Aël, Florent Pagny's children

If Florent Pagny can count on his wife Azucena Camano to get through the ordeal of the disease, the singer also has the support of his two children, Inca and Aël, who now live in the United States. Aged 25 and 22, they now live in Miami and New York respectively.

Inca is passionate about street art, according to Voici, while Aël studies photography. “She lives in New York. And then she loves photography. She went to photography school. She has a good eye and she's really good at taking pictures, so she enjoys developing that gift,” Florent Pagny confided on the set of Vivement dimanche in November 2021. And to add, about his son Inca: “once he got his pilot's license, he went to do this painting and From that moment on, all of a sudden, lots of people started calling them to come and do other frescoes.”

The Voice, a new springboard for his career

Since 2012, Florent Pagny has been a coach on the show The Voice, the most beautiful voice. As one of the emblematic figures of the show with Amel Bent, Marc Lavoine, Lara Fabian, Zazie and Vianney, he has participated in more than ten editions and has won the competition several times. He will notably be the coach of Slimane, one of the flagship revelations of the TF1 show, France's candidate for Eurovision 2024.

Florent Pagny announced in 2018 he left the jury of The Voice for new adventures, he will finally make his return in 2020 in the show which will have relaunched a slowed artistic career and restored an outdated image. The singer will again be forced to leave the show in 2022, to begin treatment for lung cancer and will make his return again in 2024.

Cancer announced on Instagram in 2022

Florent Pagny revealed that he had lung cancer on January 25, 2022 on social media. A “special announcement” from the artist, who then urged him, during the treatment, to put his career on hold. “I will not be able to finish my 60th birthday tour. I have to cancel all my concerts, following a health problem,” the artist then explains in a video posted on Instagram.

“I have just been diagnosed with a lung tumor, a not very nice cancerous tumor that cannot be operated on, so I have to enter a protocol of 6 months of chemotherapy and X-rays,” the singer continued, saying he was “sorry” for his fans, but reassuring: “When all this is settled, we will meet again, I will come back to finish what I started. Maybe it will be the 61's tour.

In 8:30 p.m. Le Dimanche, on France 2 this time, Florent Pagny detailed : "I played a little, even though you don't play with that. The treatment had worked really well, I was a bit of an idiot for four or five months. The immunotherapy cycle is four months long, and in the fifth month, one night, “it happened, I was coughing all night long.”

“I'm the one who does stupid things. If there's a relapse, it's because I found myself wanting to play Zorro a bit, saying, “OK, the medicine has done its job,” he summed up again on RTL.”Florent Pagny should this time settle down Buenos Aires after his visit to France, the capital of Argentina, in order to be closer to a hospital.

A guest at the start of the 2024 school year on Laurent Karila's podcast “Addiktion”, just before an announced return to The Voice, Florent Pagny reassured people about his health, before going into more detail about his chaotic medical journey. “When you're affected by this disease that we call the crab because it clings on, it keeps coming back, even if for a while the treatments do their job well, it has a tendency to come back,” he explained. And to add: “For me, it came back twice after the first, so it was three times.” Noting the ineffectiveness of immunotherapy in the face of relapses at repetition, he then indicated that he had given up to turn to other methods. “There, there is no more treatment. Not even immunotherapy. We realized one day that “it didn't work, there were relapses, we gave up.”