The iconic and perhaps best-known French singer, Mylène Farmer, celebrates her 60th birthday on Sunday, September 12.
Since the mid-1980s, she has been at the top of Europe’s musical Olympus, cultivating a completely unique style of performance. Her shows, with constantly changing large sets, are recognized as some of the most colorful in the world.
As the popular French publication Journal des femmes writes, she has been “hypnotizing us for almost 40 years.”
“Free electron,” “forever young,” “rebellious soul,” “red angel,” “elusive provocateur,” “mystery bubble,” “red-haired beast” – what epithets critics have not used to define Milen Farmer. Since the release of her first song “Maman a Tact” in 1984, the singer has kept information about her work and personal life a secret like no other. All communications around the singer’s performances are indeed blocked to the extent that she still has not joined social networks and gives interviews extremely rarely. Mylène last appeared on the front page of Télé Star magazine on September 6, 2021 with a beautiful photo taken while climbing the stairs at the Cannes Film Festival on July 6. The publication reported that the singer is preparing her new album in an atmosphere of utmost secrecy. Her last album, Disobedience, was released three years ago, on September 28, 2018. Since 2005, it has usually been three years between two studio albums by Mylene.
Mylène Gauthier (Farmer) was born on September 12, 1961 – in Pierrefonds (Montreal district) in Quebec City. Her father Max Gauthier, a road engineer, the youngest member of a family of four children, worked on the construction of the Manicouagan Dam. In Quebec, Mylène spent the first eight years of her life. Her mother Marguerite Martin was a homemaker, taking care of Mylène, her older sister Brigitte and her brother Jean Lou, born in 1969. Mylène admitted that she has few memories from her childhood other than “the whiteness of the snow she ate” and the famous Canadian maple syrup. Milen showed concern for animals, which would later cause her to want to become a veterinarian. At school, Mylene was a rather reserved student who had little interaction with her peers. “I wasn’t a tomboy! I never liked to play with dolls since I was a kid. I always preferred company and games for boys. Of course, that must have influenced my character,” she admitted in an interview with OK!
In the early 1970s, Mylène and her family returned to France. They settled in the Paris suburb of Ville d’Avre. Mylène adapted very poorly in her parents’ home country. Classmates made fun of her Canadian accent for a long time. She later confessed that “the isolation of the suburbs replaced a much more cheerful Canadian universe for her.” At the age of ten, Mylene won a vocal competition. She was awarded the grand prize, a book called The White Rabbit. As a teenager, she spent part of her summer visiting sick children in treatment facilities. Her love of animals led him to sign up for riding lessons in Saumur. She stopped them after a serious fall from a horse at age 16. “In another life, I think my love of animals would prevail. Ideally, I would be both a veterinarian and a shelter for them,” she admitted in an interview.
Mylene went to drama school in Coeur Florent, managed to play the role of Zezette in the play “Santa Claus – garbage”, directed by her friend Thierry Muglerom. After graduating from high school, she was intermittent earnings, first as a dental assistant, and then a gynecologist. She also tried her hand at advertising, first in a furniture commercial, then in various commercials, including one for Fiskars scissors. At the same time she was forming her own literary culture, particularly fascinated by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the poetry of Baudelaire. The texts of her compositions are deeply symbolic, full of imagery and metaphors.
In 1984 she met the director and composer Laurent Boutonnat, who became the main man of the art world in her life, launching her career and shooting all her iconic music videos of the 1980s and 1990s. The singer was credited with an affair with Boutonne, but they both said they were on friendly terms. Farmer has never been married and has no children. “I’m not married, I live with a capuchin. He’s not a monk, he’s a little monkey,” Farmer said in a recent interview. She is the muse of legendary fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who makes all the stage costumes for her. A true friendship and mutual inspiration has developed between the singer and the couturier. “I can’t thank Jean-Paul Gaultier enough for his generosity, his madness, his modesty,” she said. In everyday life, Farmer dresses in simple dresses, even sailor tops, and wears heels.