Quelqu'un M'a Dit

"Carla's career as a top Italian model may be in its twilight years, but her singing career is on the rise. This album is all in French, and she sounds totally comfortable, as she was brought up in France.

Carla's breathy vocals are reminiscent of the early folkie days of Francoise Hardy, and, more recently, Suzanne Vega. It is a fairly stark and clean sound with light backing and guitar, and is refreshingly different for today."
- Roger Marbeck

"I wanted the songs to be a bit naked, you know, not too over-dressed with layers of make-up. After all, that's the life I've lived for the past 12 years"
- Carla Bruni

Any misgivings that pundits may have had over Carla Bruni's ability to make the transition from the catwalk to the recording studio have been wholly dispelled by the runaway success of her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit [Someone told me]. The record has sold 950 000 copies in France alone and made the former model a household name.

Quelqu'un M'a Dit is a record that belies any expectations of a face being used to sell CDs instead of designer labels. Bruni is not the window dressing for an uberproducer's preconceived designs. She is a songwriter and guitarist who is actively involved in the genesis and evolution of the music she performs.

Ten of the twelve pieces on Quelqu'un m'a Dit are either written or co-written by Bruni.

Born in Turin, capital of Piedmont, Italy to an Italian father and a Franco-Italian mother, Bruni came to live in Paris at the age of 7. She started playing the guitar herself around the age of 8.

Her childhood was marked by a wide range of musical influences. On the one hand her father, a classical composer and her mother, a concert pianist, weaned her on Chopin, Mahler and Schubert. On the other there was pop music that came in many guises; French iconoclasts Serge Gainsbourg, Leo Ferre and Barbara and British legends the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Clash. Then there were American icons such as Bob Dylan, Talking Heads and Rickie Lee Jones, Muddy Waters and Ella Fitzgerald. Bruni also remembers spending about five years listening to nothing but The Velvet Underground.

"The record is very French," says Bruni. "And many people say that it's very chanson française but to me it's really a folk record, I really like simple songs with arrangements. There is space in simplicity. And it can be used really effectively."