Jeanne Mas

Jeanne Mas is a French pop singer.

Jeanne Mas was born on 28 February 1958 in Alicante, Spain.

She started studying languages at the University of Nanterre (near Paris).

After one year studying Spanish and Italian, she took off for Italy giving up her studies at the university.

She settled in Rome when she was only 18 years old.

In Rome, she took dance and acting classes.

She started landing small parts in commercials as well as in full-length films and she hosted her own show on a private channel: La Uomo TV.

Music was her true passion.

In 1979, she signed her first contract with RCA Italia and recorded her first single "On the Moon", and toured with a rock group which was rather hardcore.

She recorded several 45's, one in English and the others in Italian.

She is well known in France, Switzerland, Canada and Belgium for a number of hit singles released in the 1980s.

Her 1980's albums are good examples of the Euro disco electropop style popular in Continental Europe at the time, featuring synthesizers and very catchy melodies.

Her first success was "Toute première fois" in 1984.

This song was simultaneously released in the United Kingdom in English.

In 1984, she signed a contract with EMI Music France.

Roberto Zaneli and Romano Musumarra wrote the music for her first French hit "Toute première fois".

"Toute première fois" was an instant success: she sold more than 900,000 copies of the single which was played on the radio all the way until December.

French people discovered a young woman on their TV screen entirely dressed in black, with jet-black hair, an emaciated face, and very pronounced make-up: a bland version of the punk look.

Stimulating choreography with jerky gestures reinforced the image of a woman "who wants some action", almost aggressive.

This striking combination of dance and image seduced the young public.

The press, the radio, the television and even the discos grabbed hold of this phenomenon.

At the start of the following year, she successively released a second single "Johnny, Johnny" followed by an album simply called Jeanne Mas.

To reach a wider audience, she asked Daniel Balavoine for help.

He produced two of the songs for the album.

Another single "Coeur en stéréo" was a hit in its own right.

In October, she played the Olympia club in Paris for the first time for four triumphant concerts.

A few weeks later, she won the equivalent of a grammy for female performer of the year during the first Victoires de la musique.

Building upon this success, ravaging and full of energy, she locked herself in a studio in Denmark to record her next album.

Heavily into her work, she'd already started writing her own lyrics.

Jeanne Mas had a critical view on music and knew what she wanted.

This is why she refused a song written by Musumarra which would become "Ouragan" interpreted by the gloss and glitter Princess Stephanie of Monaco.

Two of her singles charted at number one in France: "Johnny, Johnny" and "En rouge et noir" in 1985 and 1986, respectively.

At the beginning of 1986, she released her second album Femmes d'aujourd'hui which went on to sell over 1 million copies.

The single from the album "En Rouge et Noir" quickly became a hit.

In June, the album and the single were number one on the French charts.

In the autumn, she played for seven days at the Palais des Sports in Paris and continued with forty concert dates in the rest of France.

This tour commenced in March 1987 for twenty dates, one of which was a concert in Lyon where a live record and a ninety-minute film were made.

She then decided to take a break and take advantage of this time to return to Italy to have a baby, a little girl named Victoria.

1988 allowed her to look closely at her career, her artistic doubts.

In September she got involved publicly for a subject that she held close to her heart, crimes against children.