Florent Pagny: this journalist who hated him when he started and wanted to destroy him

In the TF1 documentary devoted to Florent Pagny, a former Liberation journalist looks back on the very heavy criticism he made of the singer at the start of his career.

You can’t please everyone. After the very trying year 2022 that Florent Pagny had to endure – he had announced that he was suffering from lung cancer, forcing him to undergo heavy treatment and therefore to abandon his tour – TF1 devoted a long documentary to him, this Sunday January 1, 2023. A retrospective titled Florent Pagny: a free man, and produced by his friend Michel Jankielewicz, who looks back on the highlights of the artist’s life. Starting with his very first hit Anythingreleased in 1988, which propelled him directly to the top of the Top 50.

“It was felt that he was hurting the quality of French song“

But the commercial success of Florent Pagny does not seem to have unanimous support. If he thus finds the love of the public, the singer is heavily attacked in certain press titles. The newspaper Liberation, for example, fired red bullets at him. Yves Bigot, former journalist of the daily (now managing director of TV5 Monde, after having occupied several positions of responsibility in the media), remembers not having been tender in his criticisms: “I perceived a form of handsomeness, including in his image, in his look. Florent, he was clearly on the side of variety. What I hated, and what we were fighting at Liberation. Because we thought he was hurting the quality of French song“, he testifies in the documentary of the One.

Florent Pagny’s muscular response!

And quickly, Florent Pagny did not hesitate to respond, in his own way, to journalists who had a grudge against him. Regularly in one of the people magazines, because he is in a relationship with Vanessa Paradis – who will leave him during the summer of 1991, after three years of relationship -, he responds in song with the title rolling press. A real declaration of war, very badly seen by all the media, who choose to boycott the singer. Then follows a complicated period in his career, during which his fans but also his producer turn their backs on him… Until he meets a certain Kad Merad!