“I’m not just a children’s singer” | EUROtoday

HAS Our assembly in an unpretentious brewery within the middle of Paris, Chantal Goya arrives a couple of minutes late, flanked by Eric, an unconditional fan of somewhat forty years, which accompanies him for at the present time. Time to return a sugar -free coke that she swaps for an actual one, right here she is able to inform us every part 50 years of affection, The new present she provides this Sunday on the Paris Congress Palace, her favourite room, on the event of her 50 years of profession.

Fifty years already. By dint of imagining a hopping Chantal Goya surrounded by Jeannot Rabbit, Pinocchio and Bécassine, like an eternally amazed baby, we might nearly neglect that this icon of French track (no offense to the grumpy …) goes on his 83 years. And if time has left some traces on her face, the Chantal Goya impact is certainly current: she has not modified. “Me, I find that time has passed very quickly,” she stated, smiling.

But then what nonetheless makes Chantal Goya run? “It’s the energy that is in me: I have to release it. Going on stage is my recess. The more it moves, the more I love it … You put me on a moving plane, I love it … The boat, on the other hand, I don’t like: I have sea mast … “

Everything is in the costume

Sitting at the table in front of her coca to which she will barely touch, Guignol’s girlfriend continues the anecdotes in a very polite phrasing, enthusiastically, going from one subject to another, between (false and true) naive and gravity. “I have never smoked, I never drank alcohol. I go to bed at 11 a.m. and I sleep immediately until the morning nine o’clock. I have a very easy sleep: this is surely the secret of my form, ”she explains with delight.

In any case, she is prepared. Ready to face the 7,000 locations of the Paris Congress Palace this Sunday. Even if she does not like spending hours an excessive amount of to repeat. “Yesterday, there were 20 people on the stage, but I did not have the dress, and so I couldn’t get there. As soon as I have the costume, it’s magic. »»

When we fled Vietnam with my family, I was 12 years old and my mother did not hide anything from the harsh reality.Chantal Goya

The costumes are those of all her shows imagined by Jean-Jacques standing for more than forty years and which she keeps in a hangar a few kilometers from Châteauroux (Indre), where she now lives. And it is not very proud to specify that they are signed by Philippe Binot, of the Paris National Opera. “For this present once more, it was Jean-Jacques who ready every part …”

And to rummage in her bag looking for her telephone, to indicate us the photograph of one of many units she has simply acquired: “It is the castle of the Botté cat. Look how beautiful it is! “She said, zooming in on a wooden facade representing a building whose front door is none other than a cat language. “I have always seen Jean-Jacques leaving for hours with books under my arms to share his ideas with Pierre Simonini, who made sets for us from the very first show. »»

Not just children’s songs

Pierre left, but it is with his son Jean-Luc that Chantal and Jean-Jacques are now working. “Nowadays, everyone uses computers and images projections, but we want it to remain artisanal. Simonini always tells us, “Show me what you want. I will do that, I’ll draw it to you.” “Says Chantal Goya reproducing the singing accent of her interlocutor. “Jean-Jacques does not want to” modernize “… Do you imagine? He still has an old phone, we can’t even send him photos … I said to him: “Be careful Jean-Jacques, you’re going to be robbed, it’s the favorite phone in prisons”, “she says amused.

Chantal says he is “resourceful”, rather good at negotiating, arguing that she has always kept her feet on the ground. “I was the eldest of five kids: when we fled Vietnam with my family, I was 12 years old and my mother was not hiding from the harsh reality. »»

A shame for an artist who sings for the little ones, and who always seems to have his head in the stars. “I’m not just a children’s singer,” she corrects. When Jean-Jacques writes songs to me, he does not seek that they are only addressed to the little ones. “But still, we retort,” Bécassine “,” It’s Guignol “,” Piou Piou Petin “,” Pandi-Panda “and this famous” rabbit “who, one morning, killed a hunter? “Yes, these are the ones I sang on TV, but, in my show, there are other songs … Besides, Jean-Jacques has just written a very beautiful,” fifty years of love “, for my final. Ah, there, I am learning it … “she exclaims before singing the chorus.

She says no to Hitchcock

Anyway, Chantal Goya says herself: she is happy with what she has, she who has never developed a career plan, and for whom everything seems to have arrived a little by chance, according to the meetings. She meets Jean-Jacques standing when she is 20 years old in an evening. He assures him that they will marry, that they will have two children and that she will be successful at 30 – “he has always been a bit so guess, it’s true”. But she, what interests her above all that day is that he connects her to her because there is no more metro.

My singer model was Barbara. I was aiming high.Chantal Goya

In 1964, she dreams of being a journalist, but Daniel Filipacchi prefers to offer her the cover of her brand new magazine Mademoiselle tender age, believing that it is the perfect representative of young girls of the time. He demands that Jean-Jacques write to him a song to launch his career … “I do not want, but, hey, Jean-Jacques said to me:” Wait, you should not annoy them, and perhaps it will be the means for you to obtain a journalist position. ” “The song in question is called” It’s good Bernard “:” Oh, the, me who lived in England with the Beatles, I found it anyway Crainos, it was not terrible. Finally, well, I sing the song. And now it starts to walk, we sold more than 500,000. I didn’t believe it! »»

The cinema, yes, it made it, again thanks to Filipacchi, which is then boss of Cinema notebooks, and she inherits the first role of Female male, Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. “Godard and I worked right away, because I didn’t want a scenario and it fell well, there was none. Marlène Jobert, she had more difficulty because she was looking for the character. »»Read too Jean-Jacques Debout reveals why Pierre-Jean Chalençon is blacklist of Chantal Goya concerts

But hey, there are still limits: finding yourself naked in a bed with a boy, no question! “I said to Godard:” I don’t care. I don’t want to kiss the boys. And anyway, I will never be a show. Anyway, I already have a washing machine at home. ” This leave, which refers to a brand of household appliances, a little forgotten, Chantal Goya still laughs, like a child who has just made a good joke.

And to recall in the process that she said no to Hitchcock who wanted her for her film The noose. “But I presented my girlfriend Claude Jade, who had the role. I got yelled at home: “We don’t present the friends.” But if she has by no means consumed cinema regrets, she admits, what would amuse her right this moment, it might be to shoot a comedy with the humorist Chantal Ladesou: “We would make a card,” she said.

Clara Luciani’s nice word, Barbara’s words

Then music is invited again in her life in the 1970s. While she hangs out her gaiters on the sets of carpenter’s programs for whom Jean-Jacques composes very many songs, she finds herself replacing Brigitte Bardot at the foot, in a number. She interprets “Goodbye the beautiful scarves”. And here it is in the studio to record an album. A nice success. Until the triumph in 1977 of its essential “rabbit”, which placed it illico in the head of the French singers, with France Gall, Sylvie Vartan, Dalida or Marie Laforêt. “Girlfriends”.

The artists of today, she listens to them a little, they do not lack talent even if recently, behind the scenes of a TV show, she thanked Vianney for the dish that had been served in the lodge, thinking of addressing a chef. “Ah, effectively, it makes me suppose that I acquired a really good phrase from Clara Luciani, who’s sorry not to have the ability to come along with his little boy at my present … She makes him hearken to my songs! Suddenly recollects Chantal.

We room somewhat on her voice of which she says herself, on the units, that she would love her to be extra highly effective: “My model of singer was Barbara. I was aiming high. But Jean-Jacques said to me: “You have a grain of voice that we acknowledge immediately.” »»

The game of lie

On the other hand, she has accumulated more than 1,200 TV passages, would like to tell us about Eric, the fan who watches over her since the start of our interview. But the aura of undisputed star of childish song is suddenly demolished after its passage in The game of truth, by Patrick Sabatier, in December 1985.

Faced with an audience made up of children, she answers serious, even aggressive questions, with force minauderies, refusing to reveal her age because “the fairies haven’t any age”, and lightly evacuating the question of a very critical teacher on her texts … “I used to be massacred. But it was a present of lie, I do know that the well-known trainer didn’t exist, she nonetheless argues, with out anger or resentment. All this, now these are mud of nothing in any respect. My mom at all times stated to me: “When something is wrong, put on your dress in waxed canvas and it will slip …” “

So, yes there were fewer tours thereafter, the discs were a little less well sold, but Chantal Goya has never stopped working. And gradually discovered that the public who listened to him in the 1980s had remained faithful to him. Whether in nightclubs, where she still performs, as last weekend in Brussels, or on the stage.

His rooms are now filled with children accompanied by their parents and grandparents. In 1982, she says, the singer Barbara warned her: “One day, she stated to me:” You see, all the kids who cry out your first name and sing with you? In forty years, they will still be there. You will be an institution. ” I consider her each day. She was proper. »»

And it isn’t about to complete, as a result of the initiatives accumulate, and Chantal doesn’t intend to cease. From November, she is going to embark on an extended tour with 50 years of affection, To promote his new album particularly. Not to say that her character Marie-Rose ought to come again to the cinema in a musical story in 2026.

This relentlessness, this need to go on stage, is to not go away a hint, even when it might be delighted that in the future a few of her songs change into the nursery rhymes of tomorrow. Nor is it a escape to tame the worry of dying: “Ah no, not at all!” I’m prepared, and I’m not afraid. I consider in a life after dying, and when the hour comes, I will probably be comfortable to search out mother, dad, Johnny and all my pals. Definitely, for Chantal Goya, all ends have to be comfortable.

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

Answer

50 years of affection, At the Paris Congress Palace on May 25, at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., and on tour via France from November.

Sunday, November 2, 2025, on the Zenith in Caen. Saturday, November 15, 2025, on the Zénith in Toulouse. Sunday, November 16, 2025, at Arkéa Arena, in Bordeaux. Saturday, November 22, 2025, at Reims Arena. Sunday, November 23, 2025, on the Zénith du Grand Nancy. Sunday, December 7, 2025, on the Zenith Arena in Lille. Saturday, December 13, 2025, on the Zénith Sud, in Montpellier. Sunday, December 14, 2025, on the Tony-Garnier Halle, in Lyon. Saturday January 10, 2026, on the Zénith de Nantes Métropole. Sunday January 11, 2026, at Liberté, in Rennes. Saturday January 17, 2026, on the Zénith de Dijon. Sunday, January 18, 2026, on the Arena of the Pays d’Aix, in Aix-en-Provence. Saturday January 24, 2026, on the Zénith d’Orléans. Sunday January 25, 2026, on the Zenith of Amiens Métropole.