French song & variety
Vanessa Paradis
Vanessa Paradis, born in 1972, a French singer and actress, was one of the youngest stars of French song: at fifteen, “Joe le taxi” (1987) made her an international star. Revealed so early, she became one of the most popular French artists of her generation: a César-winning actress, the performer of an album written by Serge Gainsbourg and then of a record produced by Lenny Kravitz, and for many years the face of the house of Chanel. Montreux crossed her path at two moments of her career: at the Golden Rose in 1988, very young, then at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2010, an accomplished artist.
Vanessa Paradis in Montreux: from the Golden Rose to the Jazz Festival
1988: a fifteen-year-old star at the Golden Rose
At fifteen, Vanessa Paradis was already an international star thanks to “Joe le taxi”, her first single, sold in 3.2 million copies worldwide and reaching number three in the United Kingdom, a rare feat for a song in French.
On 17 May 1988, she embodied the export of French song at Montreux, as part of the Golden Rose, the television festival that then made the town a capital of the small screen.
It was this very young star that the photographer Bernard Leloup followed in Montreux in 1988, for a session that shows her on the flowered lakeside quays, at the entrance of the Hôtel Bonivard in Veytaux, or simply on the phone in her hotel room. These pictures capture the gap between worldwide fame and the fifteen-year-old she still was.
2010: the return to the Montreux Jazz Festival
Twenty-two years later, Vanessa Paradis returned to Montreux, this time to the Montreux Jazz Festival, where she gave a concert in 2010, before a deeply moved audience.
The festival also kept a record of her press conference from that 2010 edition.
Vanessa Paradis, Johnny Depp and Montreux
From 1998 to 2012, Vanessa Paradis shared the life of the American actor Johnny Depp, with whom she had two children, Lily-Rose and Jack. The couple, among the most closely followed in film and song, long lived in France.
Johnny Depp has his own history with Montreux: a musician as much as an actor, he performed twice at the Montreux Jazz Festival, in 2018 with his rock supergroup, the Hollywood Vampires, then in 2022 alongside the guitarist Jeff Beck. The Lake Geneva Riviera thus welcomed, thirty years apart, both figures of this couple.
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