Dominique A

Author, composer, musician and performer Dominique A (born Dominique Ané, Provins, France, October 6, 1968) broke away from traditional French chanson with his first self-taught albums, Un Disque Sourd (1991), La Fossette (1992) and La Mémoire Neuve (1995). After the unexpected success of "Le Twenty-Two bar" and a few antics at the 1996 Victoires de la musique awards, the artist became one of the leaders of a renewed French chanson à texte, open to alternative rock. A songwriter for himself and other artists (Françoiz Breut, Jane Birkin, Joseph d'Anvers, Étienne Daho, Calogero...), this adept of off-tracking alternates acoustic, electronic and electric climates throughout a prolific body of work that includes the albums Remué (1999), L'Horizon (2006), La Musique (2008) and Vers Les Lueurs (2012), which earned him a Victoire de la musique award and a gold disc. A latecomer to the mainstream, Dominique A has nonetheless retained his literary and acerbic pen on his tenth album, Éléor (2015). Three years later, he makes a double comeback, with the albums Toute Latitude and La Fragilité (released in March and October 2018), presenting his two facets, rock and chanson. Although he hadn't planned to take up his pen and instruments again so soon, Dominique A is confronted in 2020, like his fellow citizens, with the confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic. He takes advantage of this period to conceive new songs. An EP took shape, but in the end he ended up with a full-length, ten-song album. Mostly electronic by necessity, since he has to play alone, Vie Étrange sees the light of day in October. Returning in 2022 with the poetic and fatalistic Le Monde Réel, Dominique A extracted eight more songs from the same sessions for the follow-up Reflets du Monde Lointain (2023). In 2024, under his own name, he released the album Memento, featuring jazz musicians Sébastien Boisseau, Stéphan Oliva, Sacha Toorop and Jean-François Mondot. The same year, he released a retrospective double album of his repertoire, Quelques Lumières, divided between versions with the Orchestre de chambre de Genève and acoustic rereadings.