Daniel Balavoine

Daniel Balavoine (1980)

Daniel Balavoine (born February 5, 1952 in Alençon , † January 14, 1986 in Mali ) was a French chansonnier .

Life

Balavoine was born the youngest of six children to an engineer and an antique dealer. The family lived in south-west France and Balavoine attended various boarding schools. He started singing at the age of sixteen and graduated from high school. Until his 20th birthday he sang in different groups and performed all over France. He then made his first solo attempts in the supporting program of Patrick Juvet . However, his breakthrough came through his collaboration with Michel Berger , when he played in his rock opera Starmania (1978), whose title "Quand on arrive en ville" became a hit. In the same year, Balavoine had his greatest sales success with “Le Chanteur”, a song about the descent of a great chansonnier (sung in the first person but possibly alluding to Polnareff). The album “Le Chanteur” was also a great success.

In 1980, Balavoine heavily criticized the then presidential candidate François Mitterrand in a panel discussion in front of the cameras. Politicians do not take the problems of young people seriously. His fifth solo album “Un autre monde” (1980) contained the song “Mon fils, ma bataille” (My son, my battle), in which Balavoine describes a father's struggle for custody of his son. The chanson was inspired by the film " Kramer versus Kramer " and also by the divorce from Balavoine's guitarist. The songs “Je ne suis pas un héros” and “La vie ne m'apprend rien” also became an integral part of Balavoine's repertoire.

After the publication of “Vendeur de larmes” (1982), Balavoine took part in the Paris-Dakar rally as a passionate motor sportsman . When he had to give up after the first stage due to a breakdown, he took the opportunity to explore the area. Inspired by the poverty and famine of the African continent, "Loin des yeux de l'Occident" (1983) was created in Scotland. In the same year Daniel Balavoine recorded a duet with the ABBA singer Frida: "Belle".

Balavoine's political interest grew stronger and stronger, on October 23, 1983 he was again invited as a guest on a news program and said literally “I shit on the war veterans” (“J'emmerde les anciens combattants!”). The reason for this incendiary speech against the war was the attack on Drakkar , a suicide attack on an American military base in Lebanon, where Balavoine's brother Yves was also on duty. Balavoine publicly campaigned for humanitarian issues several times.

In July 1984 Balavoine's first child Jérémie was born, an experience that Balavoine made the basis of his song “Dieu que c'est beau”. Daniel Balavoine completed a successful tour in 1984 with a concert in the Parisian Palais des Sports, the performance was released as a double album under the name "Balavoine au Palais des sports".

In October 1985 Balavoines last album "Sauver l'amour" came on the market, in which he provocatively deals with political issues. “L'aziza”, a song for his Jewish-Moroccan wife, received the award from the French anti-racism organization SOS Racisme. “Tous les cris les SOS”, “Sauver l'amour” and “Aimer est plus fort que d'être aimé” are Balavoine's last hits.

In December 1985, Balavoine's friend Coluche started a project called “Les restaurants du cœur” (“Les restos du cœur”), an organization that feeds the homeless and poor for free. Balavoine attended the opening. He then traveled again to the Paris-Dakar Rally to personally deliver water pumps for the desert inhabitants. His helicopter crashed near Lake Gossi on January 14, 1986 . The rally director Thierry Sabine , the Swiss driver François-Xavier Bagnoud, the French journalist Nathalie Odent and the French television technician Jean-Paul Fur also died in this crash .

After the disappearance of Michel Polnareff , Balavoine was considered an enfant terrible of the French chanson and variety scene from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s . His songs were always provocative and shaped by left-wing politics - the then President François Mitterrand was not socialist enough for him, neither in domestic nor in foreign policy. So Balavoine tried, with the help of his great popularity and the money earned in show business, to make "politics" himself.

Balavoine's music is characterized by the bright timbre of his voice (voix de “cristal”) and the Anglo-Saxon, electronic pop music that he was one of the first to bring to France.

After his death, the "Association Daniel Balavoine" was founded to continue his humanitarian commitment. Balavoine had two children: Jérémie (* 1984) and Joana (* 1986), who were only born after his death. He is buried in the Biarritz cemetery.

30 years after his death, the album Balavoine (s) was released as a tribute , in which current artists such as Zaz , Nolwenn Leroy , Florent Pagny and Shy'm reinterpreted 17 of his songs.

Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)			Remarks
		FR	BE W	CH
1985	Sauver l'amour	FR175 gold (1 week)FR	-	-	Chart entry in FR only in 2016

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

More studio albums

• 1975: De vous à elle en passant par moi
• 1977: Les Aventures de Simon et Gunther ...
• 1978: Le Chanteur (FR:gold)
• 1979: Face amour / Face amère
• 1980: Un autre monde (FR:gold)
• 1982: Vendeurs de larmes (FR:gold)
• 1983: Loin des yeux de l'Occident (FR:gold)

Live albums / compilations

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)			Remarks
		FR	BE W	CH
1995	Balavoine	FR99 (8 weeks) FR	BE W1 gold (32 weeks)BE W	-	Chart entry in FR only in 2012
1996	L'inoubliable	-	BE W42 (1 week) BE W	-
1999	Les talents du siècle vol. 2	-	BE W48 (1 week) BE W	-
	L'ssentiel	-	BE W23 (17 weeks) BE W	CH- gold CH
2000	Tributes ...	-	-	CH52 (8 weeks) CH
2005	Sans frontières	FR53 (14 weeks) FR	BE W10 (33 weeks) BE W	CH58 (6 weeks) CH	Chart entry in FR only in 2009
2008	Les 100 plus belles chansons	-	BE W70 (8 weeks) BE W	-
	Les 50 plus belles chansons	FR152 (2 weeks) FR	BE W70 (8 weeks) BE W	-	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
2011	Talents vol. 1	FR166 (2 weeks) FR	-	-
2015	30ème anniversaire	FR10 (34 weeks) FR	BE W6 (44 weeks) BE W	CH26 (4 weeks) CH

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)	Remarks
		FR
1978	Le chanteur Le chanteur	FR69 gold (3 weeks)FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
	SOS d'un terrien en détresse	FR128 (2 weeks) FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
1980	Mon fils ma bataille Un autre monde	FR82 gold (2 weeks)FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
1981	La vie ne m'apprend rien Balavoine sur scène	FR112 (1 week) FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
1982	Vivre ou survivre Vendeurs de larmes	FR72 (2 weeks) FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
1984	Dieu que c'st beau	FR47 (1 week) FR
1985	L'Aziza Sauver l'amour	FR1 platinum (29 weeks)FR	Homage to his Moroccan wife - awarded the French anti-racism prize
	Aimer est plus fort que d'être aimé Sauver l'amour	FR151 (1 week) FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016
1986	Sauver l'amour Sauver l'amour	FR5 (19 weeks) FR
The following songs did not appear as single, but were made available for download and streaming through the album and were thus able to achieve a placement:
1985	Tous les cris, les SOS Sauver l'amour	FR40 (7 weeks) FR	Chart entry in FR only in 2016

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

More singles

• 1975: Évelyne et moi
• 1977: Lady Marlène
• 1977: Ma musique et mon patois
• 1978: Lucie
• 1979: Me laisse pas m'en aller
• 1980: Dancing Samedi
• 1980: Tu me plais beaucoup
• 1981: Lipstick Polychrome
• 1982: Vendeurs de larmes
• 1982: Soulève-moi
• 1983: Pour la femme veuve qui s'éveille
• 1984: Les petits lolos
• 1987: Ne parle pas de malheur

Awards for music sales

2 × gold record  France 1995: for the album Master Série - Vol. 2 Platinum record  France 1990: for the album Balavoine - Compilation 1998: for the album Master Série - Vol. 1

Country / Region	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Belgium (BEA)	gold1	-	25,000	ultratop.be
France (SNEP)	9 × gold9	3 × platinum3	3,300,000	infodisc.fr snepmusique.com
Switzerland (IFPI)	gold1	-	25,000	hitparade.ch
All in all	11 × gold11	3 × platinum3

Web links

Commons : Daniel Balavoine  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Daniel Balavoine, Le Chanteur
• Daniel Balavoine in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: FR BEW CH