The singer, composer and pianist Marie Paule Belle, who remained famous for “La Parisienne”, a hit of French song from the 1970s, died on Saturday at the age of 80, her press officer announced to AFP.
The artist died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, following a “long illness”, said this source, in reference to cancer which Marie Paule Belle spoke freely about, even in a poignant poem in 2024, entitled “KO! “.
Lover of words
Born on January 25, 1946 in Oise, the singer with a cheeky voice grew up in Nice. A lover of words and, in her own words, “born on a piano”, she experienced her first successes with “Wolfgang et moi” and “Nosferatu”, which she sang during her first television appearance, in 1973, with Philippe Bouvard.
Her greatest success remains “La Parisienne”, released in 1976: with her natural fantasy and never malicious irony, Marie Paule Belle tells the story of a young provincial who goes to the capital. To a melody she composed, a nod to the tunes of Offenbach’s operettas, she sings a heady refrain: “I’m not Parisian/It bothers me, it bothers me/I’m not in the wind/It’s heartbreaking, it’s heartbreaking”. Beneath its mischievous veneer, the song sketches the portrait of a free woman, discovering the customs of Paris in the 1970s.
A style that stands out
Its unclassifiable style contributes to the success of the song and the title is certified gold, offering Marie-Paule Belle a key to the rest of her career. She continued with “Les Petits Patelins” and made her first Olympia.
“Not an activist at heart”, the sassy and feminist singer also likes to “raise awareness with words”, she explained. Her repertoire takes on social themes, on euthanasia or homosexuality with “Celles qui amourelles”, a title which echoed the couple she formed for a decade with the Belgian novelist Françoise Mallet-Joris, member of the Goncourt academy, who died in 2016.
“For years, I did not feel the need to broach this subject since I experienced it naturally with Françoise. Without looking for the scandal that we were creating in a fixed society,” confided the singer, who owes the words of “La Parisienne” in part to her partner. She also paid tribute to him in a book published in 2020, “As if you were still there”.
Friend of Serge Lama or Barbara, Marie Paule Belle never adorned herself with the trappings of the star, and followed a complete artistic career which also took her to the stage of the theaters.
