Born on 3 May: Eddy de Pretto, gay icon of music and much more...

At the crossroads of French chanson and urban pop, he was born in Paris in 1991.

Before making a breakthrough in music, and since the age of twelve, Eddy de Pretto trained in theatre. He notably took courses at "Scène sur Saône" (Lyon) and then at the Blanche Salant Workshop (Paris). Even before recording his first album entitled "Cure" (2018), he had already obtained some secondary roles in a handful of feature films. His stage performances break away from the traditional patterns of the genre. During his last tour, he wandered on a catwalk inspired by giant advertising signs along highways, occupying the space all by himself. His musicians only appeared in images on the screen. Surprising and devilishly original...

Since the album "Cure" (2018), Eddy de Pretto has been seeking a touching balance between self-assertion and a certain introspective timidity. He unveils himself undeniably, sometimes bluntly, but manages to retain an element of mystery. Thus, even though he doesn't hide his homosexuality, he often states that he doesn't wish to become a flag-bearer for the cause. "I just want to tell my life and my reality," he often says. He does this admirably well in songs such as "La fête de trop" (2018), "Bâteaux-Mouches" (2021), and, implicitly, "Kid" (one of his early tracks in 2017).

Two years after "A tous les bâtards", De Pretto made a remarkable comeback with "Crash Coeur", an album that navigates between the simplicity of solo piano accompaniment ("Maison") and, more often, a hypnotic R’n'B ("urgences 911"). Mixing lower and upper cases in a somewhat random manner, not forgetting erratic punctuation and some cryptic signs, the singer plays with language codes and thus refines his own brand of post-modern poetry. "About how I lied/To hide my thirties/About the books falsely read/The images overflowing/.../About the disconnected networks/To rediscover real life," he states in "CRASH<3"

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo: © Music Belgium Photos)

Photo: Eddy De Pretto on stage at the Cirque Royal in Brussels (Belgium) on 23 April 2024