In an exclusive interview with Cambodge Mag, Julie Pietri, the unforgettable singer of ‘Ève, lève-toi’ and also ‘Et c'est comme si’, ‘Amoureux fous’ (a duet with Herbert Léonard), ‘Nouvelle vie’ and ‘Si on parlait de ma vie’, talks about her career as a singer of the 80s, her return to the stage, her encounter with the AMUR association and her first trip to Cambodia.
A huge star in the 80s, you remained discreet for ten years before enjoying a resurgence in popularity from the 2000s onwards.
I quite simply stopped my career when I became pregnant with my daughter in 1991. I stopped for more than ten years and came back in 2003 thanks to an extraordinary programme offered by TF1 called Retour gagnant. The idea was to choose a song and talk about our career during the programme. I was competing against a number of singer friends, and the show had a huge impact. There were ten personalities competing with me live and I was the one who won with 4.5 million viewer votes...
That's how I was able to resume my career thanks to that show in 2003. From then on, I started releasing albums that I was happy with, and that weren't just compilations, but real albums. I released an album of jazzy covers called Autour de minuit in 2007.
I also performed a very beautiful scene in 2007. Today it's difficult for me to talk about it because it's a sad memory, but at the time it was a very beautiful stage that didn't have such a heavy legacy. It was the Bataclan. I put on an exceptional show, and released a DVD, with a 25-strong jazz Big Band orchestra. It was a wonderful moment and it really got the whole thing going again. Between the winning comeback and this jazzy album, I was also able to get back on stage with my musicians and tour the whole of France, going to Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, South America, etc.
More recently (in 2022) I released an album called Origami, which I also produced and co-wrote. Unfortunately, I suffered from cancer and had an operation in 2023. The following year, I relaunched the machine by releasing the same album on double vinyl, with three previously unreleased tracks and duets with singer friends. So that's still my most recent baby, which is selling very well in France.
I imagine that your comeback has stirred up a lot of emotions in you...
When I won this public participation programme in 2003, I said to myself: ‘Wow, that's crazy’, because I didn't know that I still had so much love from the public.
I'd had a lot of success with several gold discs: Maria Magdalena, Et c'est comme si, Je veux croire, Amoureux fous with Herbert Léonard, all under the name Julie tout court. I had the nerve to use my surname again for the album Le Premier Jour, which included Ève, lève-toi, which also went gold, topping the Top 50 and selling over 1,000,000 copies.
This album was a very innovative concept, because it wasn't at all the type of music I'd been producing before. To answer your question about this whirlwind, I'd say that it's something that overtakes you. The English version did well in Spain, Italy and Germany, and reached the top 15 of the Europarade. I couldn't appreciate it at the time, because I had to be everywhere at once, I had to be on every television channel imaginable, I had to travel the world, I had to go all the way to Lebanon once again, coming back via Germany and then Spain. It was quite difficult because I couldn't manage anything any more. I didn't really have time to enjoy that period, which is a shame.
“I often say that this song is the blockbuster of my life and people reduce me to that a lot, but I accept it because I wrote this text with this desire for modernity and feminism.”
I also think that, at the time, not everyone really understood what I was trying to express. You have to take the time to listen to the text and its many references, as well as its deeper meaning.
JI've heard a lot of different interpretations of the meaning of this song, some of them reductive and some of them a bit zany. I find it reductive, it sometimes feels too little for me, but I'm also delighted with it, because it's a song that unites a lot of aficionados, that expresses the ideas that are mine, in other words my conception of feminism, of a fusion music that brings together sounds from the East and the West. I really liked this mix.
Finally, if I'm remembered as part of the heritage of French music thanks to ‘Ève, lève-toi’, I still accept it with a lot of love, and that's also a blessing because not everyone can say the same.
How do you feel about the French music scene today?
As far as I'm concerned, it's difficult, because the media give priority to whoever makes the buzz, forgetting everything else. There's a lot of hype, and when I go to a radio station to propose my latest creations, I'm told that my songs are good, very modern, but that the station won't play me because I'm not thirty any more. It's ageism, but it's also discrimination, because other artists of my generation get airplay because they're men!
Men have fewer age problems when it comes to an artistic career. Women are often reduced to... ‘She's still beautiful for her age’. There's a programmed obsolescence for us women. So it's terrible.
How did you hear about AMUR (Au Moins Un Repas)?
Martial Leotard and Éric Idier, who work in events management, contacted my band's manager about organising a concert in the town of Richelieu for the 2017 Christmas festivities. This region is also where I grew up. After our return from Algeria, I had a lot of memories there with my cousins and especially my grandmother. It was a great event that attracted a lot of people and brought back many pleasant moments from my teenage years.
So I meet these two boys, I come off stage, I'm signing everywhere, and they ask for a chat. They told me about their initiative in Cambodia. They wanted me to become the patron of their association. They asked me to preface their book Regards du Cambodge, which I gladly did, and that's how the story began. I gave a concert with all my musicians for the association's tenth anniversary, and I promised to come to the country. The project was delayed because of my cancer, but today, at last, I can discover the work of the association, meet my god-daughter Chantoun and also discover this beautiful country. I was very moved during my first meeting with the children from the slums supported by AMUR. Seeing them waiting quietly in silence was a very powerful moment.
What would be your first impressions of Cambodia?
I'm completely candid, but my first impression would be of the cultural richness of the country. I'm thinking of this impression of two worlds living side by side, one very uptown, quite well-to-do, and then another in the countryside, where life is much harder. On an evening stroll past the king's palace, I saw a lady with her baby sleeping on the floor. So yes, we do want to help. I often say something that is perhaps very naive:
“If you save a child, you save the world...’”
Thanks to AMUR's work, if at least half of the children get out of this situation, that will be very good indeed. But I do what I can and if someone offers me the chance to get involved in a project like this, I jump at it, because I believe that, once again, saving a child on this earth means saving the world. There are some who don't give a damn and who turn a blind eye, like a lot of artists. Especially in this day and age, navel-gazing is over the top. And I know a lot of artists who do a lot of navel-gazing or who get involved in humanitarian work just to get their name out there. That's not my case at all, I don't want to do that. It revolts me.
Do you have any artist friends that you would also like to raise awareness of, or would you like to create a synergy around your involvement in this NGO?
I don't know yet. I talk about it, I post on social networks every day, with my little Chantoun, I communicate with everything I can relay. In fact, I communicate a lot on three subjects: the status of women (I'm very feminist, it's true), female cancers and children around the world. If it's in Cambodia, it's in Cambodia. When it comes to helping children, there's no colour, no race, no religion. They are everywhere and they need us.
What aspects of Cambodia appeal to you most?
I'm in awe when I see these magnificent pagodas, when I see the Mekong... Oh, I'm also a total fan of Cambodian cuisine. In fact, I want to try it every day during this trip. There are some extraordinary dishes. I discovered the famous amok, but also other dishes based on vegetables and aromatic herbs. It's absolutely delicious. It's a real discovery. I love being immersed, I think it's great.
Anecdote: I learnt that there were quite a few members of the government who spoke French and one of them, the Minister of Tourism, was very keen to meet me.
“Quite frankly, to come back to my impression, it's a fabulous country, fantastic people, there's a tremendous number of things to see.”
To my great regret, people don't take the time to discover Phnom Penh, even though it's a fabulous capital with authentic districts and an incredible variety of things to see.
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