Santa: a look back at his crazy year

His voice does not tremble, his words are precise. The singer thinks in the long term, she seems to leave little room for chance and even less for inactivity. Santa knows how to occupy the field, too: not long ago, she was active in Telethon like everywhere else on television where she signs the anthem of the Star Academy of TF1 after inaugurating the illuminations of the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Last year, she sang more than 40 meters high in a Brussels square. Suspended in the air at the piano, just for the love of performing. Without forgetting, last September, the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games where, caped, she resumed Live for the best by Johnny Hallyday on mondovision at the Stade de France.

The young woman, born February 24, 1993 in Nice, who presented herself as a gladiator at the NRJ Music Awards, does not lack ambition, and even less tenacity. Released more than two years ago, his song Salty Popcorn has become a hit today, and his first solo album entitled Start me again (Parlophone) released last spring has since been knocked out of the rankings by the heavyweights of hip-hop, the dominant style in France. As if, in fact, Santa almost single-handedly carried loud and clear the colors and heritage of the great melodic variety, combining with her powerful voice sensitivity and grandiloquence, tradition and modernity. “ My ideal artist is composite, she explains. It has the piano of Elton John, the strings of Moby, the voices of Céline Dion and Johnny Hallyday. Without forgetting the chords of Michel Berger and Véronique Sanson who would play with four hands. » The fault, perhaps, in her dual Franco-American culture, as she agrees: “ In my opinion, I am French because of my love of words and American because of my showmanship. I sing behind my piano, sure, but I make that piano fly through the air on stage. Above all, I look for panache and I want my songs to pierce people’s hearts. » His motivations? “In my job, you can be driven by ambition, revenge or a thirst for recognition. In my case, I think it’s a clever mix of all three, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend otherwise. »

To believe, even if she affirms that it is only a “ posture », which Samanta Cotta alias Santa never doubted, not being a first-timer. Already, with her group Hyphen Hyphen, she had managed to win with her war paint on her face and her texts in English. A first adventure born at the Lycée Masséna in the heart of Nice, a Côte d’Azur where Santa grew up between an architect father and a singer mother in the 1980s within the rock group Daisy Duck. “ Their expectations of me were unspoken and I thought I had every choice possible, Santa remembers. They had confidence. I grew up in a terribly free atmosphere and I started playing the piano simply because there was a piano in the living room. And when I played sports [du judo, ndlr, cf p. 44]I had to be the best. And I was the best! “. Of the successful career of her mother who “refused to go solo when her group broke up”, Samanta ultimately only knows about it from concert posters and other record covers. Or even a report broadcast at the time in the show Les Enfants du Rock.

His parents disappeared successively, his father in 2010 and his mother in 2019. “ It’s a tragedy that I carry within me, she breathes. Has my perception of things changed? Yes. Since then, I have been singing louder so that my songs resonate higher. “The way, according to her, the least” immodest » to discuss these intimate subjects. You also have to know how to listen to Santa when she rejoices that no one is surprised that she sings throughout the verses of Salted Popcorn : « I will hear the bravos / Smother the flames / I will extinguish the chaos / You will be my wife » As a couple, she specifies: “ I have always been comfortable with my queer side, proud to be part of this community. I have never hidden it, I have always accepted it but, sometimes, not seeing mentalities advance more quickly fills me with rage. »

Beyond the causes that are close to her heart, Santa admits to building professional projects over “four or five years”, functions like a business manager reinvesting everything she earns for “ create spectacular », including a Zénith tour coming next year. So, proud, Santa? “ Pride is a complex feeling, she analyzes, and I prefer to read it in the eyes of those who work with me. It can easily be confused with arrogance, or even pretension. Which sometimes can’t do any harm, but only in small doses. » Beyond his paradoxes, Santa also admits preferring “ forward passes » rather than looking back to her past, she gives the answers to these questions in songs. And finally said to himself, “ too young to be nostalgic », another feeling that she also knows how to convey in her texts.

*In concert on December 13 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, June 5 in Nantes, June 6 in Rennes, June 7 in Amiens, June 11 at the Zénith in Paris, June 12 in Caen…

This article could be found in the Gala No. 1644, available on newsstands on December 12. To follow the news live, you can join the WhatsApp feed of Gala . The new issue of Gala is on newsstands from this Thursday, December 19, 2024. Happy reading.