Gerald de Palmas

I became a fan of French singer/songwriter Gerald De Palmas back at the beginning of this decade, after hearing his song "J'en Rêve Encore" whilst listening to French radio stations on the internet. I immediately fell in love with his music and it wasn't too surprising therefore that on my next holiday to France in 2001 I bought his brilliant album "Marcher Dans Le Sable" which should be worn out by now as it was played so often! "J'en Rêve Encore" written by Jean-Jacques Goldman, the man with the Midas touch (!) resurrected Gerald's career. A brilliant song, which still sounds brilliant today:



He actually arrived on the French music scene in 1994 and his debut hit was this one, "Sur La Route"



After the success of "Marcher Dans Le Sable" his songwriting skills were much in demand and he wrote Johnny Hallyday's massive hit song "Marie". Celine Dion also recorded an English language version of "Tomber". Here is Gerald's original French version:



Gerald also toured in 2002 and a live CD and DVD was released. There was also one new song on this CD - "Elle S'ennuie" which was a more rockier sound from him. Some horrible things in this video, maybe best not watching if you don’t like insects!



His most recent album "Un Homme Sans Racines" was released in 2004, and one of the hit singles from it was "Elle Habite Ici":



When you think about how popular the laid-back singer/songwriter style of music has been over the past few years, I would say that Gerald De Palmas was definitely ahead of his time as he was making that type of music much earlier in this decade. If you listen to Christophe Mae's music for example, it's very influenced by De Palmas.

There is still no news of any new material from this very talented artist (now 40 years old) and his official website hasn't been updated either. Hopefully he will come back within the next couple of years with some new music - I'll certainly keep my eyes and ears out for this and will post any info on here when I get it.