“The step I am going to take is very strange.
Julien Doré has his face masked and his heart beating as he entered the courtyard of the elementary school of the Parc, in Lunel (Hérault) last Friday.
“I passed hundreds of times in front, going to see my parents who still live in Lunel, but it's been almost thirty years since I came back to my school,” he explains.
It's crazy besides, it has hardly changed.
The benches have disappeared, but otherwise nothing has changed.
"
Like the children of Lunel and elsewhere, Julien Doré is making his comeback.
After having made us dance all summer long with “La Fièvre”, he released his fifth album on Friday, the beloved “Aimée”, a light, funny, committed and serious record, where the 38-year-old singer worries about lush pop melodies of changes in the world, environmental and societal, while finding hope in transmission, solidarity and childhood.
In this perspective, it was he who suggested that we return to Lunel in one of the educational places that forged his unique personality.
“Lunel is my city,” he blurted out.
I spoke a lot about Alès, where I was born, Nîmes, where I studied Fine Arts and my Cévennes, but not Lunel, whereas it is the city where I spent the most time in my life, explains Julien Doré.
I lived there from 2 years to 20 years.
Coming back to my school… there is a real link with my album.
And I have great memories there.
More joyful than in college and high school, where I felt less out of place.
And less well in my skin.
"
Among the employees of the town hall who welcome us, there is Nicole's husband, the librarian.
“She says hello to you, Julien.
She told me you spend a lot of time in the library.
"Kiss her and thank her for me," replied Julien Doré, who perfectly remembers the library nestled on the top floor.
He stopped there for a long time and chose to pose with a book on wolves, a recurring animal in his world, and another on the poet Robert Desnos.
"Of my last three albums, all written in the South, this is the one that says the most about me", slips Julien Doré. / LP / Frédéric Dugit
In this former high school transformed into a school of sixteen classes, the former pupil shows the rooms where he has been.
"Here, it's Mr. Rocca's class," he recalls.
He always wore open shoes, summer and winter ”.
“And he had them until he retired two years ago,” smiles the school principal.
Julien Doré traveled an hour from his home to join us.
"I returned to live in the Cévennes two and a half years ago," he testifies.
A need to rebalance my life as a man and an artist.
When I arrived, I did not touch the guitar or the piano.
I learned the vegetable garden, permaculture, I tinkered with my house, repaired my house with my father and Dédé, the friend with whom I did the building sites.
Two months before making the Nouvelle Star, we were setting up the Banque Populaire branches in the region.
After ten years in Paris, I needed to get my hands dirty again.
"
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It is also this return to the earth that inspired his texts.
“Of my last three albums, all written in the South, it's the one that says the most about me when I talk about the world,” he admits.
These songs were born in the home studio that we built in a cellar in my house.
I live very quiet, very isolated, with my dogs (Editor's note: the two white shepherds he blackmails on his record) and passing friends.
"
Julien Doré in concert at the editorial staff
Julien Doré in concert at the editorial staff (and he brought us his decor for the occasion 🐼)
Gepostet von Le Parisien am Montag, May 29, 2017
In the Cévennes, Julien Doré also found his grandmother, who gave her first name to the album.
Aimée Prat, 99 years of an admirable life.
Widowed in her forties, she raised her two daughters while working and activating within the CGT for the rights of the widows of minors.
We would have loved to meet her to talk about the album but, and this is all the more understandable with the pandemic and the recent classification of the Hérault in the red zone, the singer protects her.
The idea for the name came to him during confinement.
“The album was finished and I didn't have a title,” he says.
The Covid-19 is coming and I can no longer go to my grandmother.
One morning, I clicked when I saw her first name in writing: Aimée, it can adapt to a thousand things, the planet, life, women, childhood… When the confinement is over, I showed grandma my cover project.
It touched her a lot, but in Cévennes families, things are said with the eyes and the time.
It is the second time that he pays homage to his grandmothers.
“On the previous album,
&
, it was my Italian grandmother.
Their journey, their strength, are examples for me.
It took me 13 years to carefully begin to reveal a little of my private life.
But little by little, I am lifting the protections I put on from the New Star.
I am more relaxed.
I am no longer in the quest for legitimacy, I am just more than happy to live off my passion.
"
“I have always been lonely, silent, discreet, but what I understood here, by changing my life, is that there are forces of nature that do not wait to be helped by high, on education, on food, on culture.
I feel guilty about no longer having faith in political politics and as I age, I want to share my experience.
The one who instilled this in me was Cabrel in Astaffort.
It doesn't say much, but it creates things locally.
When he invited me there, it clicked.
I would very much like, in my region, to transmit something.
"
Even if he does not want to become a teacher, the artist would like to “pass on” his experience in his region. / LP / Frédéric Dugit
Could he have become a teacher?
“I don't think I have the skills, but I have a pretty cool contact with kids.
With them, I always feel like I have people my age in front of me.
When I discussed with Cléo and Swann, my pianist's daughters, the lyrics they sing on the album (
Lampedusa, Nous, Barracuda, Kiki
), I was always impressed by the accuracy of their visions.
"
For a decade, Julien Doré has been one of the rare French artists to have seen his popularity grow from record to record, from "La Nouvelle Star" which he won in 2007 to his two complete Bercy at the end of 2017 and his million records. sold for "Love" and "&".
After three years of absence, how does he experience this funny comeback?
“In this context, I'm really happy that these songs are coming out, but when I think of my stalled tour in the fall of 2021, with 80 people on the road, my smile is veiled every time.
It is very difficult to announce it with flons when all my friends musicians and technicians are at a standstill.
"
EDITOR'S RATING: 4/5
Julien Doré, "Aimée"
, Columbia / Sony, on tour in the fall of 2021.