French singer Gérald de Palmas. © Sylvain Baudier
Under a Leading Sun is the eighth studio album by Gérald de Palmas. This will probably be the last. The artist revealed that he is ending his career following a “recurring voice problem”, of which no trace appears on this disc, faithful to his music.
A style recognizable among thousands: an atypical voice, a little pinched but harmonious, songs imbued with pop, folk and sometimes blues, where it is often about love and the need to escape. Here is the sketch of the universe of Gérald de Palmas, which unfolded in a dazzling way in 1994.
That year, the singer won the competition for the show Talent de Demain, on French television. This victory allowed him to realize his dream: to record and then release his first album, The Last Year. On the road, the single from the album – still his biggest hit today – met with enormous popular success. Gérald de Palmas is on all television and radio. A year later, he won the title of male revelation of the year 1995 at the Victoires de la Musique.
Then in 1997, he published The Laws of Nature, his second album. Whether he collaborates with Jean-Jacques Goldman (J’en rêve encore, 2000) or Maxime Le Forestier (Une unique vie, Tomber – covered in English by Céline Dion under the title Ten Days) or whether he writes and composes alone, Gérald de Palmas is an essential figure in French song.
Who writes for himself, but also for others. Thus, in 2002 (the year in which his album Marcher dans le sable, sold more than a million copies, was crowned a diamond disc), he wrote several songs for Johnny Hallyday, including the hit Marie, a poignant song from love which will sell more than 750,000 copies in two months.
Discretion and Meeting
Other records and other tours followed, accompanied by numerous successes. However, the singer had been discreet for several years. In 2016, the year he released The Beauty of the Gesture, Gérald de Palmas moved to Reunion, his native island, where he has lived since then, in the greatest discretion. What followed was a seven-year break, a saving one, according to the man who had never really stopped producing and singing on stage since 1994. “I was close to indigestion,” he admits.
The singer therefore returns with Under a Lead Sun. Eleven new songs. And a slightly different way of singing. The singer took lessons, patiently, from an old video where a New York teacher taught an opera technique. “I tried to find my voice and accept it, but I hope people don’t see the difference,” says Gérald de Palmas. Deal. His voice is there, seems intact despite the difficulties he encounters with it, perhaps just a little denser and deeper.
There is blues and folk on this new album which hovers under a blazing sun. If The Casters of Spell invites us to dare introspection, Balthazar, in which a man meets, by chance, “a fellow man, a mirror” is an apology for fraternity and friendship.
More love
It is of course also about love. A bit psychedelic, Magie noire, also very swinging, is aimed at a woman with an “improbable body”, bewitching, who “has the gift of making men lose their reason”. Beautiful as Before speaks of the infinite flight of time, and of a woman, who would sell her soul so that her body could stand the test of time, while her “salty skin begins to wrinkle”.
The breakup takes shape on The Last Step and The Unfaithful Lover, a catchy song with acidic lyrics. “This husband who is waiting for you, what would he think of you?” asks the unfaithful lover to his mistress. It also appears in The Last Step, where it is a question of ending, without really succeeding, in a story.
But mad love is also present Under a blazing sun. The eponymous title of the record, which swings with the slow, is a declaration of love to the loved one while waiting to find her again. “Alone I lost my mind, under a blazing sun” sings Gérald de Palmas with exaltation.
There is also a desire to extract oneself, to escape from gravity and otherwise put it into perspective (Melancholy, but also C’est la vie) while playing against the tide “at the risk of capsizing” in the face of desires , sometimes meaningless, that capitalism gives rise to (Triste trance). And to dream of altitude therefore. Under a blazing sun.
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of palms, Under a blazing sun (On The Road Productions) 2023
2023-11-13 08:31:06
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