Thought, composed and recorded between confinements and restrictions linked to the health crisis, the new album “Après les heures grises”, by Pauline Croze, was released on October 8. The singer, on tour throughout France, returns to the music that punctuated her childhood and adolescence.

Where did you spend your childhood and in what environment?
I grew up in a pavilion in Villemomble, in the Parisian suburbs. Before becoming a psychoanalyst, my mother worked in an Italian tourist office (she had dual nationality). My father started his career as a professor of physics, then a consultant at the Ministry of National Education, where he tested the brand new CD-ROMs of educational software. Fan of cinema, he had a large film library in which we could draw what interested us. I was a pretty lonely child. I had very few friends and enjoyed drawing a lot. Rather very good student at the beginning of my schooling, I let myself go over the years. I still managed to get my baccalaureate by doing the bare minimum.

Did your parents listen to music?
At home there was music all day, especially on weekends. The style varied from room to room. In the living room, my parents liked the opera, Léo Ferré, but also Julien Clerc for my mother and Boby Lapointe for my father. My two older sisters had very opposite tastes. In their rooms, one loved to listen to French variety (Patrick Bruel and Mylène Farmer), the other rock with very sharp choices (Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa). I loved to navigate from one room to another, open to discovering all these different styles of music. Added to this was the radio, which I listened to every night to fall asleep and which gave me the possibility of always hearing new artists.

What’s your favorite childhood song?
The favorite song of my childhood is that of the TV movie Sandokan, which played in the Club Dorothée, interpreted by Joël Prevost. She had a very dynamic and elated side. We felt we were dealing with a hero. I would put the 45 on my channel and walk around the house singing it very enthusiastically. Performing a song for a child is a special exercise, and Joël Prévost did it really well. As a teenager, I remember listening to Strange Fruit, by Billie Holiday, and Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zeppelin, on repeat, whose vocal and melodic virtuosity fascinated me.
Continue reading “Pauline Croze’s youthful looks” →