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Top 10 greatest Chansonniers of all time according to the results of voting on the website https://www.ranker.com /
Performers
Edith Piaf
Edith Piaf (fr. [edit pjaf] (listen); born Edith Giovanna Gassion; December 19, 1915 – October 10, 1963) was a French singer, songwriter, cabaret performer and film actress, known as the national singer of France and one of the most widely known international stars of the country. Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson and rousing ballads about love, loss and sadness. Her most widely known songs include “Life in a Rose" (1946), "Don't Regret What Happened" (1960), "Hymn of Love" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Ful" (1957), "Accordion Player" (1940) and "Padam, padam..." (1951). After her death in 1963, several biographies and films about her life were published, including the 2007 Oscar-winning film Life in Pink, and Piaf became one of the most famous performers of the 20th century.
Serge Gainsbourg)
Serge Gainsbourg (born April 2, 1928 – March 2, 1991) was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, artist, screenwriter, novelist, actor and director. Considered one of the most important figures of French popular music, he was known for his often provocative and scandalous releases, as well as a variety of creativity that embodied genres from jazz, mambo, world, chanson, pop music and ye-ye to rock and roll, progressive rock, reggae, electronica, disco, new wave and funk. Gainsbourg's diverse musical style and personality make it difficult to classify him, although his legacy is firmly entrenched and he is often considered one of the most influential popular musicians in the world.His lyrical works included wordplay, often for humorous, provocative, satirical or subversive purposes, including mondegrin, onomatopoeia, rhyme, spoonerism, dysphemism, paraprosdokian and pun. Gainsbourg has written more than 550 songs that have been sung more than 1,000 times by various artists. After his death, Gainsbourg's music reached a legendary level in France, and he is considered one of the most revered musicians in France. He also gained cult fans in the English-speaking world, many performers were influenced by his arrangements.
Jason Koucha
Jason Koucha is a pianist, composer and songwriter whose works, interests, public contributions and charitable associations span the world, including the UK, France, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Jason Mariano Korczak was born in Lyon, France. He was educated at Westminster School and studied classical piano at the Royal College of Music and the University of Edinburgh. He is a descendant of Alexander Kolchak, a Russian naval commander.
Jacques Romain Georges Brel
Jacques Romain Georges Brel (April 8, 1929 - October 9, 1978) was a Belgian singer, songwriter, actor and director who composed and performed literate, thoughtful and theatrical songs that gathered many devoted fans - first in Belgium and France, later around the world. He is considered a master of modern chanson. Although he recorded most of his songs in French and sometimes in Dutch, he influenced English-language songwriters and performers such as Scott Walker, David Bowie, Alex Harvey, Mark Almond and Rod McQueen. Translations of his songs into English have been recorded by many artists, including: Bowie; Walker, Ray Charles; Judy Collins; John Denver; The Kingston Trio; Nina Simone; Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams.Brel was a successful actor, starring in ten films. He directed two films, one of which, The Far West, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. Having sold more than 25 million records worldwide, Brel is the third best-selling Belgian recording artist of all time. Brel married Teresa "Michelle" Michelsen in 1950, and the couple had three children. He also had a romantic relationship with actress and dancer Maddley Bami from 1972 until his death in 1978
Léo Ferré
Leo Ferré (August 24, 1916 – July 14, 1993) was a French-born Monegasque poet and composer, a dynamic and controversial concert performer whose career in France dominated the post-war years until his death. During this period, he released about forty albums, wrote music and most of the lyrics. He released many hit singles, especially in the period from 1960 to the mid-seventies. Some of his songs have become classics of the French chansonnier repertoire, including "Avec le temps", "C'est très", "Jolie Môme" and "Paris canaille".
Mireille Mathieu
Mireille Mathieu was born on July 22, 1946 in Avignon, France, into a family of fourteen children; the younger brother was born after she moved to Paris. Her father Roger and his family were originally from Avignon, while her mother Marcel-Sophie (nee Poirier) was originally from Dunkirk. She arrived in Avignon in 1944 as a refugee from World War II after her grandmother died and her mother went missing. Roger, along with his father Arkady, ran a family stone workshop near the main gate of the Saint-Veran cemetery. Mathieu's family has been a bricklayer for four generations. Today the store is called Pompes Funèbres Mathieu-Mardoyan, it is owned and operated by the family of her sister Rejan.
Mathieu's family lived in poverty, but in 1954 their living conditions improved significantly when subsidized housing was built in the Malpenet quarter next to the cemetery. Then, in 1961, they moved again to a large apartment building in the Croix-de-Oiseau quarter to the southeast of the city.
Roger once dreamed of becoming a singer, but his father Arkady disapproved of this, inspiring him to have one of his children learn to sing with him in church. Mathieu included her father's operatic voice in her 1968 Christmas album, where it was mixed with the song Minuit Chrétiens. Mathieu's first paid performance in front of an audience at the age of four was rewarded with a lollipop when she sang on Christmas Eve 1950 during midnight Mass.
Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour (born Shahnur Vaginag Aznavourian, Armenian: May 22, 1924 - October 1, 2018) was a French-Armenian singer, lyricist and diplomat. Aznavour was known for his characteristic tenor: clear and ringing in the upper layers, with hoarse and deep low notes. During his career as a composer, singer and songwriter spanning more than 70 years, he has recorded more than 1,200 songs translated into 9 languages. In addition, he has written or co-written more than 1,000 songs for himself and others. Aznavour was one of the most popular and persistent singers in France. During his lifetime, he sold 180 million records and was called the French Frank Sinatra, and music critic Stephen Holden called Aznavour "the deity of French pop music." He was also perhaps the most famous Armenian of his time. In 1998, CNN and Time Online users from around the world named Aznavour the artist of the century. He was recognized as the outstanding performer of the century, gaining almost 18% of the total number of votes, beating Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. Jean Cocteau said: "Before Aznavour, despair was unpopular."Aznavour has sung for presidents, popes and members of the royal family, as well as at humanitarian events. In response to the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, he founded the charity organization "Aznavour for Armenia" together with his longtime friend impresario Levon Sayan. In 2009, he was appointed Ambassador of Armenia to Switzerland, as well as Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations in Geneva.He started his last world tour in 2014. On August 24, 2017, Aznavour was awarded the 2618th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Later that year, he and his sister were awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Prize for harboring Jews during World War II. His last concert was at NHK Hall in Osaka on September 19, 2018.
Joe Dassin
Dassin was born in New York City to American film director Jules Dassin (1911-2008) and Beatrice Lohner (1913-1994), a New York-born violinist who, after graduating from Jewish high school in the Bronx, studied with British violinist Harold Berkeley at the Juilliard School of Music. Both of his parents were mainly of Ukrainian-Jewish origin from Kamenets-Podolsky, Satanov and Buchach.
Dassin lived in New York and Los Angeles until his father fell victim to the Hollywood blacklist in 1950, when his family moved to Europe. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, Dassin changed schools eleven times. He studied, among other things, at the International School of Geneva and at the Rosy Institute in Switzerland, and completed his secondary education in Grenoble. Dassin returned to the United States, where he studied from 1957 to 1963 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he received the Hopwood Prize for Fiction in 1958, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961 and a Master of Arts degree in anthropology in 1963.
Patricia Kaas
Patricia Kaas (born December 5, 1966 in Forbach) is a French singer and actress. Her music is a mix of pop, cabaret, jazz and chanson. Since the release of her 1988 debut album "Mademoiselle chante...", Kaas has sold more than 17 million records worldwide. She achieved the greatest success in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Russia, Finland, Ukraine and South Korea with her third album Je te dis vous. In 2002, Kaas made her film debut in the film "And Now"... Ladies and gentlemen with Jeremy Irons. She represented France at the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 in Moscow and took eighth place.Patricia Kaas, the youngest in her family, was born on December 5, 1966 in Forbach, Lorraine, France, near the German border. Her father, Joseph Kaas, a miner, was a French Germanophone, and her mother, Irmgard, was a German from Saarland. Kaas grew up in Stiring-Wendel, between Forbach and Saarbrücken on the French side of the border. Until she was six, she spoke only Lorraine Franconian. Her mother encouraged Kaas, then a little girl, to become a singer. At the age of just eight, Kaas has already performed songs by Sylvie Vartan, Dalida, Claude Francois and Mireille Mathieu, as well as English-language songs such as "New York, New York", at various small events, such as her brother's wedding. Her first real success came when she took first place in a pop song contest. Kaas took her first step into the professional music business at the age of 13, when, with the help of her brother Egon, she signed a contract with the Saarbrücken club Rumpelkammer. Kaas took the name Paddy Pax — in honor of the Pax Majorettes, a brass band from Steering Wendel, of which she and her sister Karin were members - and for seven years performed with the Dob group "Lady Killers". At the age of 16, she got a job at a modeling agency in Metz. Her first attempts to break into the music business failed; the producer rejected her on the grounds that the world does not need a second Mireille Mathieu. The producer of Kaas at that time was the architect Bernard Schwartz.[
Далида
Иоланда Кристина Джильотти (17 января 1933 - 3 мая 1987), профессионально известная как Далида, была итальянской певицей и актрисой, натурализованной француженкой, родившейся в Египте. С примерно 140 миллионами проданных пластинок по всему миру, она является одной из самых продаваемых итальянских музыкальных исполнительниц. Her best known songs are "Bambino", "Gondolier", "Les enfants du Pirée", "Le temps des fleurs", "Darla dirladada", "J'attendrai", "Le jour où la pluie viendra", "Gigi l'amoroso", "Salama ya salama", and "Paroles, paroles" featuring spoken word by Alain Delon.
Дебютировала как актриса в фильме "Стакан и сигарета" Ниязи Мустафы в 1955 году. Год спустя, подписав контракт со звукозаписывающей компанией Barclay, Далида добилась своего первого успеха как певица с "Bambino". После этого она стала самым крупным продавцом пластинок во Франции в период с 1957 по 1961 год. Ее музыка попала в чарты многих стран Европы, Латинской Америки, Северной Америки и Азии. Она сотрудничала с такими певцами, как Хулио Иглесиас, Шарль Азнавур, Джонни Матис и Петула Кларк.
Хотя параллельно со своей карьерой певицы она снялась в нескольких фильмах, она фактически воссоединилась с кинематографом благодаря фильму Юсефа Шахина "Шестой день", вышедшему на экраны в 1986 году. Фильм имел успех в Египте, где три миллиона человек собрались в Шубре, чтобы увидеть Далиду на предварительном просмотре. Во Франции, хотя фильм был высоко оценен критиками, он стал коммерческим провалом.
Далида была глубоко потрясена самоубийством своего партнера Луиджи Тенко в 1967 году. Несмотря на это, она продвигалась вперед в своей карьере, основав со своим братом Орландо звукозаписывающий лейбл International Show, записывая больше музыки и выступая на концертах и музыкальных конкурсах, но продолжала страдать от приступов депрессии. Далида покончила с собой 3 мая 1987 года.
Леонид Утесов
Владимир Высоцкий