Famous in France: Meet American singer Valli

The Earful Tower: Paris

Oliver Gee

Arts, Paris, Society & Culture, Travel, Places & Travel, France

4.8 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2019

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hello everyone!

Meet Valli, a woman who sang in France's first ever rap song in 1982.

The song - Chacun fait (c'qui lui plaît) - went on to sell 2.5 million copies and made Valli so popular that she still gets stopped on the street to this day.

But she's only really known in France. Back home in the States, she can walk the streets uninterrupted. Fancy that!

I met her in her home in the 12th arrondissement to discuss fame, music, and how answering machines and American cowboy boots were hot property in France in the eighties.

I highly recommend you check out her song, by Chagrin d'amour, which you can find on YouTube here.

Someone has translated the song into English here.

Pictures from our chat will be on social media and the site very soon.

Support the Earful on Patreon here.

And to get that additional ten percent off from French Today, go via this link.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everyone. You're listening to the Earful Tower podcast. My name's Oliver G. I'm an Australian
0:04.2	guy. I've been in Paris for, well, four and a half years now. And this podcast is all about
0:09.4	meeting the interesting people who make the city of light shine. And that is no exception for
0:14.4	today's episode. More on that in a second. First, this episode is brought to you by French Today.
0:19.1	Now, they're audiobooks that they'll teach you French.
0:22.0	You'll learn French like a French person.
0:23.5	If you want to buy their audio books, you get a 10% discount off.
0:26.7	If you visit their site by typing in www.w.
0:29.9	Frenchtay.com slash earful 6.
0:32.8	10% off, a further 10% off even.
0:35.4	So go and check that out.
0:36.8	But today's episode, you know what? I'm going
0:39.3	to say first is a shout out to a listener. Lexi from Australia, a Patreon supporter, and she got
0:44.6	in touch and I met up with her and she said, you know what, Oliver? I love the episodes that are
0:48.6	recorded in cafes. It really makes me feel like I'm in Paris. I took that on board I think it was really good
0:55.8	feedback and in fact a handful of the upcoming episodes were recorded in cafes parks people's
1:03.0	homes to give you that sort of you know that feeling that you're sitting there in Paris with us so
1:08.0	there you go Lexi hope you enjoy this one and speaking this one, today's guest is a really fun one.
1:13.0	Valie, her name is.
1:14.2	We explained the whole story in the podcast, but to just set the mood a little bit,
1:17.9	she came to Paris a handful of decades ago, and she was in the first ever French rap song.
1:24.5	She was singing in it. Now she works more in radio, less in rap, but that song
	...

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