With his show Emmanuel 2 on tour throughout France in 2025, almost-forty-year-old Manu Payet indulges in hilarious intimate confessions as he retraces the thread of his existence. He will be in the series from January 24 Super Males on Netflix. A super music connoisseur too.
What was the first record you bought as a teenager?
At 13 or 14 years old, the soundtrack of the film Rain Man, including Johnny Clegg's hit, Scatterlings of Africa.
Your favorite way to listen to music?
The telephone. It used to be quite a journey to buy music. I took the bus to go to the record store, where we couldn't always listen and then we found ourselves home with the album that everyone was talking about at school. I see myself coming home with it under my arm Puta’s Fever by Mano Negra. But was I going to like it?
The last disc you bought and in what format?
A vinyl of course. Radiohead, Kid A. I came across this album that I love, which I already have in multiple formats, but I said to myself: let's go for it!
Where do you prefer to listen to music?
What I like today, thanks to the accessibility of music, is having the choice of when to listen to it. There is a soundtrack to my life and I make sure to pay attention to it. For example, I arrive in front of a somewhat unexpected landscape and I ask myself: what music fits?
Do you listen to music while working?
Yes, always. She guides my writing. I can put songs that I shazamed the day before and that I loved like Orion Sun the other day, Mary Jane. It's a bit like the piece that will decide the tone of what I'm going to write: is it going to be funny or melancholic?
The song that you are ashamed to listen to with pleasure?
Gilbert Becaud, It's September.
The record that everyone loves and you hate?
Lou Bega, Mambo Number 5.
The disk to survive on a desert island?
I'll leave with a Beatles or Pixies album and I'll choose at the airport.
Is there a record label you are attached to?
4AD. The Pixies record company, I listened to them a lot. They’re a band that helped shape my musical taste and I discovered this label through them.
Which record cover do you want to frame at home?
Pixies, Pink Surfer. I actually had several t-shirts bearing his image. By being washed, the pattern disappeared. As there was a screen printer near my high school in Reunion, I had him redo it.
A record you would like to hear at your funeral?
Something I love that others always asked me to take off when I passed them by. Just to piss them off and force them to listen until the end.
Your fondest concert memory?
-Radiohead in Bercy in 2003 for the tour Hail to the Thief.
Do you go to a club to dance, flirt, listen to music on a good sound system or do you never go to a club?
I go there a lot less, I have Cabasse speakers.
Who is the band you hate seeing on stage but whose records you love and vice versa?
The Strokes. I didn't hate it but it's true that it's disappointing.
Your favorite film music?
Let BO you film Greystoke with Christophe Lambert.
What is the record that you share with the person who accompanies you in life?
Little Simz, Drop 7. She also stars in one of our favorite series: Top Boy.
The song that makes you mad?
I'm going to make a bad pun: Killing in the Name of de Rage Against the Machine.
The last record you listened to on repeat?
A track from the solo album of Fontaine DC singer Grian Chatten, Last Time Every Time Forever.
The group you would have liked to be part of?
Since Frank Black from the Pixies is known for not being a very nice guy, I'm going to tell you Vampire Weekend instead which seems a little more fun to me.
The song that always makes you cry?
Mickey by Bill Conti, excerpted from the BO Rocky III.
