The Voice often watched “The Voice”. Maurane tweeted regularly during the show, getting excited about his favorites. She, “the” voice, unique timbre, recognizable among thousands after a few seconds since her debut 30 years ago, ped away Monday evening at the age of 57.
“Maurane was a musical instrument, she wasn’t afraid to go too far,” comments Olivier Mees, who was her manager for seven years. “She was incapable of hitting a wrong note,” remembers Marc Lumbroso, artistic director who was preparing with her a new album of Jacques Brel covers, expected for next November. Brel precisely, with whom she had started, by participating in a first tribute show in 1979, after having been immersed in music all her childhood. A composer father, Guy-Philippe Luypaerts, died in 1999, and a mother, Jeannie Patureaux, piano teacher. Cats don’t make dogs.
VIDEO. Death of singer Maurane
At the time, Maurane (name borrowed from a show director) is still called Claudine. “It was my grandmother who called me that because she had lost a daughter with that name,” the singer told us in December 2014at the time of the release of his latest album, “Ouvre”, and his autobiography entitled “Trop forte”.
Music as an outlet
“The looks of others, I’ve known that all my life. In my own family, they called me Bouboule. My grandmother put me on a diet when I was 4 years old. » She made a song about it. “The good nature of fat people is nothing but anger stored under the skin,” she hummed then.
What’s better than music to exorcise all that? Especially with a voice like that. However, it will not be of use to him when his destiny changes at the end of the 80s.
“It seems a little crazy but I signed a contract with her in 1988 without having heard her sing,” says Marc Lumbroso. At the time, I was head of the Polydor label. Maurane had already recorded an album with Saravah (mythical record company which had published the first recordings of Brigitte Fontaine and Jacques Higelin). But she was not very happy with this team. We had breakfast together. And I was immediately fascinated by his personality. Then I heard one of his first songs that had already been released, To danceand I said to myself shit, she’s a jazz singer ! »
“Working with her was both joyful and sporty”
But Maurane can do everything, knows how to do everything, including inventing a new variety, precisely tinged with jazz and embodied by a white soul singer. A mama for “All mamas”, her first real hit, taken from her second album released in 1989.
“During the recording of this record, we often argued in the studio,” says Marc Lumbroso. I offered her songs that she didn’t want to perform. She got angry, I told her I was going to cancel her contract. And we had a good laugh too. Working with Maurane was both joyful and sporty. » The singer was capable of first refusing a gem like “Sur un prélude de Bach” served on a platter by the composer Jean-Claude Vannier before changing her mind and making it a huge hit in 1991.
In this case, it was the melancholy Maurane, able to heal her spleen in song as on “Ca breaks” or “Different when I sing” where she combined power and emotion: “Nothing but questions of changes in tone. Artistic blurs that hide an atomic bomb. After the bubbles of champagne, a desire for cocagne. Tonight, I have to touch the sky lose myself in the cry of a gospel, “she sang then.
There was also a bit of her in “Who are you Marie-Jeanne”, a nod to her character of the mythical automaton waitress that Michel Berger had given her when re-editing “Starmania” in 1988. The role was beginning to vampirize his interpreter. ” Tell me. Where I’m going. Where the lights take me every night. I’m playing. Your story. Even when I sleep. I feel you. I still look like you. I don’t know where I am anymore. Where are our lives going? You are me. I am you. You are in the scene. »
umed big mouth
Maurane was all that, joyful good living and sad, lonely heart. “I like to laugh, I like to live, but darkness is also there. I laugh a lot but I cry a lot,” the artist told us in 2007.
She had a daughter, Lou, now 24, with singer Pablo Villafranca. But family life did not last long. Probably too volcanic for that. “I don’t like political correctness. I’m a lot more rock’n’roll than many who claim to be. I’ve always lived with thugs. Not criminals, nice thugs. I too am a barge somewhere. You have to follow me. Or not. »
Ludovic Barnouin precisely followed her for nearly ten years. “She was a raw personality, says the one who was her manager until 2016. She was both ultra-generous, very loving and could throw her four truths at someone and then apologize the next day. »And beware of those who were bothering Maurane.
In 2011, a surfer called her a “big cow” on Twitter and was snatched back by the singer. “The big cow buggers you dry with sandpaper, tabasco and a squeeze of lemon…”, she replies. We always preferred, to the big mouth, the huge singer for whom almost everyone wrote: Goldman, Lavoine, Eicher, Brigitte Fontaine.
“When she sang, everyone stopped”
Sometimes the performer got lost in all these proposals, no doubt accepting compositions that were not up to his talent. Fortunately, as long as she made the right choices, Maurane became an artist in a state of grace again. This was the case on “Si Today” in 2006 or “Ouvre”, his last album released in 2014.
“When she sang, everyone stopped,” remembers Bertrand Lamblot, who made this final recording. Of all the great French-speaking vocal singers, she had in addition to an inner noise, something that the others did not have, she had jazz in her. She made this incredible confession to me: Herbie Han had called her in person to sing Joni Mitchell songs on tour and she had refused because she didn’t feel up to it. »
On the other hand, in 2009, she was not afraid to magnificently celebrate Claude Nougaro, her idol, her mentor, her friend. A triumphant cover album. The following ones were a little less so. To the point that Maurane wanted to take a break two years ago.
“She needed to rest, no longer had the desire,” murmurs Ludovic Barnouin, her former manager who has always remained close to the artist. She had edema on her vocal cord and had to have surgery. Everything was undoubtedly linked. And then the desire had returned in recent months. I had dinner with her three weeks ago and I felt she was super happy with this new Brel cover project. » His voice would still have done wonders there. Saturday evening, “The Voice” will pay tribute to him. The least you can do for The Voice.