Julie Piétri

Best known for her 1986 hit "Ève lève-toi", Julie Pietri has continued a career that began a few years earlier. Born in Douera, then in French Algeria, on May 1, 1955, Nicole Juliette Pietri arrived in France with her family at the age of seven, and grew up in the Rouen suburbs, then in Morocco and the Paris region. Introduced to music by her older brother, she sang in a high school band called Julie + Transit, and in 1975 recorded her first song, "On s'est laissés faire", based on John Denver's "Annie's Song ". The following year, she joined the Bande à Basile, which enjoyed nationwide success with "Les Chansons françaises " and especially "La Chenille " (1977), which became a staple at weddings and other festive evenings for a decade. With this success, the singer signed a solo contract with CBS and, under the name Julie, reached number 6 in the charts in 1980 with the ballad "Magdalena". An album released the same year featured compositions by Jean Schultheis and Claude Puterflam, and preceded a first appearance at the Olympia, at the invitation of Sacha Distel. Signed to the Carrère label in 1982, the singer scored another hit with the disco-tinged "Je veux croire", followed by "Et c'est comme si", an adaptation of The Kinks' "I Go to Sleep". In 1983, a romantic duet with Herbert Léonard, "Amoureux fous", was a hit on radio and television. Other solo songs followed, such as "Dernier appel" and "Tora, Tora, Tora" (after Toni Basil), which appeared on the 1985 album À Force de Toi. The following year saw Julie Pietri reclaim her name for what would become the biggest hit of her career, "Ève lève-toi", which reached No. 1 in the Top 50 and stayed there for six months. Selling almost a million copies, it was included on the album Le Premier Jour (1987), with four other extracts. An English version of the hit, "Listen to Your Heart", is also released. After headlining at the Olympia in December 1987, the artist released her 4th album, La Légendes des Madones (1989), a more rock-influenced affair on which she wrote most of the lyrics. As godmother of the festivities for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, she performed a few songs linked to the event, then put her career on hold to devote herself to the birth of her child. Back on stage in 1995 with the album Féminin Singulière, composed by François Bernheim and featuring some of her hits in new arrangements, Julie Pietri performed in Parisian clubs, and the following year sang the theme song for the TV series Dans un grand vent de fleurs, the Corsican-language song "Canto di Sorenza", with the group Voce di Corsica. In 2000, she released a new dance version of "Ève lève-toi", followed by several tours and TV appearances. In 2003, Julie Pietri won the contest for the TV show Retour gagnant, before recording the album Lumières and the song "Si on parlait de ma vie", which reached No. 43 in 2004. Her return to the Olympia for the Rose d'or festival in 2004 preceded the CD and DVD release of the 1987 concert, Julie Pietri à l'Olympia. Her next album, Autour de Minuit, released in 2007, featured jazz versions of French chanson classics. The publication of her memoir La Fille du silence (2009) was followed by appearances on the Âge tendre and têtes de bois tours between 2011 and 2013, then Stars 80 (2015, 2017) and Stars 80 & Friends (2018). The original album Origami was released in 2022.