On November 2, 2019, Marie Laforêt died at the age of 80. The singer left behind a long list of hits, after almost 50 years of career, including the unforgettable song It snowed on Yesterday. Five years after his death, a complete work will be published thanks to the help of a great admirer of the Franco-Swiss artist. Yohann Masson, a 39-year-old from Avignon, has in fact compiled all of Marie Laforêt's work with the help of Universal. This represents a gigantic job since no less than 18 records and 377 songs were recorded. But this is not the best performance of the thirty-year-old.
He actually managed to get his hands on a recording of an album yet banned from distribution by the singer herself. An impressive story that he tells in the October 17, 2024 edition of Parisian. According to him, it is “a truly cursed record, forbidden, stolen, found, lost”. The owner of the soundtrack is named Pierre-Richard Muller. He is the producer of the record. It was he who, contacted by the Parisiantells the crazy adventure of this work: “Marie didn't want to release the album, so I kept the tapes in my safe in Geneva. A year or two after recording, I was robbed and they were stolen from me with the rest of my things. But by crazy luck, a municipal police officer found them in a trash bag left on a sidewalk a few days later, just before the garbage collectors came by. My name was on the boxes, he brought them back to me. It was miraculous“.
A mysterious record even for Jean-Mehdi, the son Marie Laforêt
Five new lyrics from the singer will be discovered in this new album. It will be named The Fire, in homage to one of the unreleased tracks present on the disc. A choice made by fan Yohann Masson, who became close to his idol in the last years of the singer's life. But neither he nor the children of Marie Laforêt, with whom relations were not good, can answer the eternal question: why not have these songs published?
For Jean-Mehdi Azuelos, one of his sons, the record was also “very creative, productive”. He even claims to have only “rarely seen his mother so fulfilled.” Statements that further fuel the legend of these unreleased releases to come. The reason for its non-publication may be of the singer's private life, who had an existence punctuated with drama. “Shortly after, she remarried a Swiss man. I no longer lived with her. And we never talked about it together. I ended up forgetting this album” says his son, who became a pianist. Without the tenacity of a fan, oblivion would have been general.
