Johnny Hallyday (born Jean-Philippe Smet, 15 June 1943) is a French singer and actor. He was married for 15 years to popular Bulgarian-French singer Sylvie Vartan, and the two were considered a “golden couple” for 20 years. Hallyday has completed 181 tours, had 18 platinum albums, and has sold more than 110 million records worldwide, making him one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time. Hallyday remains largely unknown outside of the Francophone world, thus earning the nickname “the biggest rock star you’ve never heard of” in English-speaking countries. (More from Wikipedia)
After touring with him and making a movie together, Sylvie Vartan married Johnny Hallyday, a true French icon who is often referred to as the “French Elvis” and has sold 80 million albums worldwide (though he remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world). They flew to Nashville by the end of 1963 and recorded a best-selling album with the Jordanaires (who recorded with the real Elvis for many years) called Sylvie à Nashville; it sold one million copies in Japan alone. Three of the songs were in English, including one with Paul Anka. Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday were the country’s “golden couple" and had joint sellout shows annually in the 1960’s through the 1970’s.
Shortly after Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday divorced in late 1980, Serge Kapustin and Nan O’Byrne collaborated on a song called “Il Me Fait De La Magie” (“It Reminds Me of the Magic”) with French singer Marie-José Casanova. The song appeared on the French album Sylvie Vartan by Sylvie Vartan that was evidently intended to re-establish her identity as a singer. The album is one of several eponymous albums listed in the Discogs site, but in the extensive “List of Sylvie Vartan albums” in Wikipedia, the album is apparently the one also listed as Ça Va Mal (the opening track on Sylvie Vartan is “Ça Va Mal”). The album was reissued on CD in 2013.
(April 2015/1)
