AMEL BENT. Singer Amel Bent returns to Les Enfoirés this Friday, March 4, 2022. The opportunity for us to take an interest in her life, her children and her (ex) husband, Patrick Antonelli.
[Mis à jour le 04 mars 2022 à 20h34] “I have a single philosophy”. Who has never sung this song, which marked a whole generation? At 36, Amel Bent will be back in the Enfoirés troupe, whose concert is broadcast this Friday, March 4, 2022. The opportunity for us to retrace the life of the singer, her career, but also to take an interest in her children and her husband, Patrick Antonelli.
It was on June 15, 2015 that the singer married this manager of a driving school in Neuilly-sur-Seine, whom she met the year before. Their wedding takes place in this city, before they leave for Saint-Tropez to spend their honeymoon there. Born in February 1977, he manages two establishments. In 2016, he was indicted in a driving license fraud case involving celebrities (such as Ali Baddou, Jérémy Ménez or Samir Nasri), with the complicity of an employee of the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture. According to the authorities, he would have allowed 258 people to obtain false driving licenses against a sum of money between 2,000 and 10,000 euros. Patrick Antonelli will spend four months in prison.
After these disputes with the law, the couple finally had to divorce, reported Public, to be able to file a tax return separate from that of Amel Bent. “The prosecutor has requested a large fine against my client, when he was already sentenced last year for tax evasion to pay several hundred thousand euros. A sum he is unable to repay (…) And as you know, he divorced amicably last year, because it’s not up to his wife to pay,” Patrick Antonelli’s lawyer told the magazine. Thursday, January 27, the Versailles Court of Appeal sentenced Patrick Antonelli to three years in prison, two of which were suspended.
Invited from Seven to Eight on Sunday October 24 on TF1, Amel Bent revealed her round belly, announcing that she was expecting her third child. “I just passed the famous first trimester. I normally have a baby who will be born in a few months,” said the singer, who also revealed that she had a miscarriage and lost her baby a few months ago, right in the middle of filming of The Voice. “Very quickly, in the days that followed, I began to feel other sensations that I know less about. It started with cramps in my stomach. Obviously, I immediately called my doctor who told me that it was normal. (…) Except that the pain intensifies. I say nothing, I cross the days of recording by saying to myself: ‘I hope there is nothing serious'”, is – she remembered, evoking a test “very painful, both physically and psychologically.”
Amel Bent wants her experience to help women who have suffered a miscarriage to talk about it, “so that these taboos are no longer taboos”, she wrote in a message posted on Instagram. “These are painful ordeals that the codes of our society force us to ignore (…) Let’s be strong, let’s be united and let’s not be afraid to make things happen for our future generations”, concludes the singer.
Amel Bent Bachir was born on June 21, 1985, in Joué-lès-Tours, in Indre-et-Loire. Her father is Algerian, her mother, Algerian-Moroccan. It was in La Courneuve, in the Parisian suburbs, that the future singer grew up, alongside her parents, her half-sister Mélissa and her half-brother Ilies. His mother transmitted to him the love of French song, especially that of Charles Aznavour.
Amel Bent’s biography is obviously inseparable from music, which she discovered very early. Supported by her high school music teacher, she joined a gospel choir and performed as a teenager at the MJC in her neighborhood. After a baccalaureate S, Amel Bent began studying psychology. But it was in 2003 that her destiny changed: that year, the young woman passed the castings for Nouvelle Star, a very popular tele-hook on M6.
In 2003, therefore, at his 18th birthday, Amel Bent sent his candidacy to The New Star, season 2. She was selected and joined the M6 adventure the following year. At the castings, she presented herself in front of André Manoukian, Dove Attia, Marianne James and Manu Katché with the title I Surrenderby Céline Dion, then, in French, Bohemian by Charles Aznavour. “You are a very good singer… of karaoke”, throws Dove Attia at the end of her performance, giving her a “no”. It’s a “yes” for Manu Katché, André Manoukian and Marianne James: Amel Bent joins the show. Her powerful voice earns her the support of the show’s viewers week after week. The young artist will reach the semi-finals. A third place which will have made him known to the public, but also to the producers, who offered him a contract as soon as he left the tele-hook. At the end of 2004, on November 30, Amel Bent released his first album, called A summer day and carried by the single My philosophy.
after madness New Star and his signing with the Jive label, from Sony, viewers are waiting for Amel Bent and his first album at the turn. In addition to the undeniable success of the title My philosophywhich we will talk about a little later, the other singles The right to error and the almost equally well-known Do not hold back your tears are also hits: the album A summer day sold over 650,000 copies in just a few weeks, achieving platinum certification. And above all, this first album allows Amel Bent to be nominated for the Victoires de la Musique in 2006, in the Public revelation artist of the year category. A prize she won, after performing her hit, My philosophyon the stage of the Zénith de Paris.
The song marked an entire generation: My philosophysingle from Amel Bent’s first album, A summer day, released in 2004. The title is an incredible commercial and popular success: for six consecutive weeks, it squats the first place of the charts in France, then in the Top 10 for twelve weeks. In 2005, My philosophy is the third best-selling single of the year, having sold more than 750,000 copies in France alone. Like the album, the song was nominated for the Victoires de la Musique in 2006, in the Original Song of the Year category. Written by Amel Bent and rapper Diam’s, My philosophy speaks of a young woman, “mestizo but not a martyr”, “girl from a popular neighborhood”, who believes in her dreams and fights to move forward, and “aim for the moon”, “always with her fist raised”.
After this vast success, Amel Bent will release five other albums between 2007 with At 20 years and 2019 with the opus tomorrow. But music is not the only passion of the artist, who launches parallel to the cinema and in the dubbing of cartoons, like Tinker Bell and the Secret of the Fairies Where Yeti & Company. Amel Bent also connects TV sets: from New starshe went through Dance with the stars, The Voice Kids and now, The Voice.
With her husband Patrick Antonelli, Amel Bent had two daughters. On September 30, 2015, it was on social networks that she made the news of her first pregnancy: on February 4, 2016, she gave birth to a first child, named Sofia. “I love my time in the studio, but I rush to find my daughter and my husband. I know singing is my passion, but it’s also my job. And this job can’t eat up my whole life. I’m a woman, a wife, a mother. Terribly happy. And I yearn to find my audience, you have no idea”, she confided at the time to Télé 7 Jours. On October 17, 2017, she gave birth to a second baby girl, named Hana.