by John Bush
One of the brightest French pop stars of the 1980s, Jean-Jacques Goldman debuted as the frontman for Tai Phong, but later went on his own and recorded the countrys most popular album of 1986, Non Homologué. Born in Paris in 1951, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Germany, Goldman learned piano and violin as a child, then discovered pop music — specifically, Aretha Franklin — at the age of seventeen. He attended college during the early 70s and spent time in the French Air Force as well. In 1975, he answered an advertisement from two Vietnamese brothers, Khanh May and Tai Sinh, to play in the group Tai Phong (Vietnamese for high wind). The band released several albums during the late 70s, but Goldman left the band by the following decade.
After several years of failure, he finally found success with the 1986 single Je te Donne, from his album Non Homologué. The LP sold over a million copies in his native France, and was followed by the even better selling Entre Gris Clair et Gris Foncé one year later. He continued to sell well into the early 90s, and even made several North American appearances following the release of his 1994 album Traces.