“…An idea comes to me, what if we left like two old fools. We would live in a hotel; we would have coffee in bed; we would choose a little hotel in a pretty corner of the south..” In 1973 Michel Sardou sang Les Vieux Mariés, a premonitory love song. It told the story of old lovers, who, after a busy life, decided to live out their last days in the South. Time has passed and the singer of the Popular Balls, the France liner and the Connemara Lakes has decided to retire in the South, the country of his beloved father, Fernand, at the end of the great tour named as it should be. , I remember a farewell.

Two more concerts and goodbye. Two giant galas that he gives on Saturday and Sunday at La Défense Arena. Proof that this time it’s over – he had already given a first farewell tour in 2017 – Michel Sardou has liquidated everything and intends to join his wife, Anne-Marie Périer. “Thanks, Hidalgo, I’m out! I sold everything, Paris, Normandy. I’m going to the South. My wife is already there,” he explained to Le Parisien.

Also read From 7 to 77 years old… Why Michel Sardou still fascinates

Les Vieux Mariés by Michel Sardou, words by Pierre Delanoë and Michel Sardou, music by Jacques Revaux

Lazing around, resting in a radiant setting of lavender and umbrella pines, Michel Sardou only dreams of that. It is no longer “Today perhaps” as in Fernand Sardou’s famous serenade, but immediately as he bluntly asserts: “Song and theater are over. Serious. On March 30, I am on vacation, retired.

Also read “Music is filthy”: Juliette Armanet displays her “disgust” for Sardou’s The Lakes of Connemara

Before leaving for warmer skies, the interpreter of J’accuse did not forget to scratch some of his favorite victims. Aya Nakamura and Juliette Armanet benefited from his claws. The first, expected to sing at the Paris Olympics, was met with disdain, “Who is Aya Nakamura?” While the Connemara Lakes critic was entitled to a slightly contemptuous barb, “With who? Ah, you’re talking to me about the girl! I think this girl was tricked by this Belgian radio station, which I know…”

Will Sardou keep his promise to go play with the dolphins, who, it seems, understand his words, and to never return to this scene which for more than half a century has given him a artistic glory that even his adversaries recognize in him? The cantor of the “Ricans” affirms it and assures him: “Yes, this time, I am sticking to it. Before I sing again, I’ll really have to lengthen them…”. Perhaps, but it is not certain that the nostalgia of the stages will catch up with him one day, “do you remember a slow song, ten years ago, ten years already…”

I come from the south by Michel Sardou, words by Pierre Delanoë and Michel Sardou, music Jacques Revaux