DANI. Singer Dani died on the night of Monday to Tuesday July 19, 2022, at the age of 77, from “following a malaise.”
[Mis à jour le 22 juillet 2022 à 10h36] Singer Dani died on the night of Monday to Tuesday July 19, 2022, at the age of 77, following a malaise, her manager announced in a press release. Singer, but also actress, magazine leader or model, she had marked the 60s and 70s with her hoarse voice so recognizable and her personality. After his remarkable comeback in 2001 with the song like a boomerangin duo with Etienne Daho, she was still working on new projects and was due to release a new album soon.
After the announcement of his death, tributes to Dani are numerous on social networks. “You did everything with the elegance of dilettantes, surfing, off the beaten track, without letting yourself be locked up in the boxes in which they wanted to lock you up, charming your world with your mischief and your deep, sensitive voice, hidden in the swirls of smoke from your cigarettes”, writes the singer Etienne Daho in a long message posted on Instagram.
The funeral of the singer Dani will take place on Tuesday July 26, in Perpignan, in the Saint Jean-Baptiste cathedral. She will be buried in the Saint-Martin cemetery, in the family vault. “Dani had his communion in this cathedral and we were all baptized there. Our father, our mother and our sister Jeanne (Dani’s sister died in 1999 editor’s note) were all buried here. We lived right next door (. ..) It was unthinkable to say goodbye to him elsewhere”, explains to The Independent Véronique Graule, another sister of Dani. In Paris, a tribute will be paid to Dani on his birthday, October 1, in the Saint-Roch church.
Singer and actress Dani died in the Tours region, where she had been living for two years, on the night of Monday to Tuesday July 19, 2022, from “following a malaise”, according to a press release sent by her manager to the AFP. An unexpected disappearance, especially since the artist was currently preparing a new album and had just completed the tour of his latest record, Golden Horizonsreleased in 2020.
In the press release from Dani’s manager, the exact circumstances of his death are not specified, a mere mention is made of “malaise”. During her life, the singer had no known illness. But she had often confided in her addictions in the media. In the 80s, at the bottom of the wave, Dani fell into heroin. She explained to Here is got out “thanks to [s]a family.” “First, they protected my children. And treated me like a sick person, not like a drug addict. When Emmanuel and Julien were teenagers, I told them everything, cash. They were surprised, but I think they were very careful about all that…”, she remembered.
Throughout his career, which began in the 1960s, Dani has multiplied appearances and album releases. Among his huge discography, here are the three most essential songs of the artist:
- Like a Boomerang : On November 26, 2001, Dani and Etienne Daho released the single which would become a hit for each of them: like a boomerang. Originally, this song was written by Serge Gainsbourg, for Dani to participate in Eurovision. But Antenne 2 refuses it, because of a text deemed too provocative and sexually connoted. Dani will enter the contest with another song, Paris Paradise. The song like a boomerang, blocked by rights, and forgotten, until Etienne Daho encourages Dani to bring it out of the closet. Is right.
- Dad just married the maid : In 1966, singer Dani released her very first record: Garçon tomboy. The success is with go and its popularity increases with the exit, in 1968, of the song Dad just married the maid. It is with this title that the artist will be noticed by the general public, which will make his career take off.
- Kesta Kesta : In the wake of the release of her latest album, Horizons Dorés, released in 2020, singer Dani unveiled the sulphurous clip of the single Kesta Kesta, in which appears the no less sulphurous Joey Starr. A video made by Michael Cohen, in the Parisian club Le Boeuf sur le Toit.
In addition to her singing career, Dani has also made a name for herself on the big screen. In 1964, she made her first film appearance in the film Round, by Roger Vadim. In 1971, we find her in the first female role of Tumuc Humacby Jean-Marie Périer, then in some gentlemen too quiet by Lautner. But it is with François Truffaut that she will break through the screen: in The American night and love on the runfilms in which she plays the same character.
The death of singer Dani is all the more unexpected as a new album was to be released soon. rightly baptized Attention departure, the artist had already almost completed the mixes of his new songs, indicates the press release from his manager. And to add, about this “departure” mentioned in the title of this album: “we were warned, she had just forgotten to tell us that it would be imminent.”
“In this latest album, whose songs were all written by women and whose music was composed by her sidekick, her artistic double, Emilie Marsh, Dani left us messages and kisses – she distributed so many – in one of these messages, as an epitaph, she sings ‘mark simply, I was right'”, is it detailed in the press release of his manager.
In 1964, the singer Dani met the photographer Benjamin Auger, who died in 2002. From their union was born a son, Julien, in 1969. The artist also adopted and raised Emmanuel, born in 1964, the first son of her spouse. The couple separated in the mid-1980s, after twenty years together.
Danièle Graule, better known as Dani, was born on October 1, 1944 in Castres, to a shoemaker father and a shoe saleswoman mother. Eldest of three siblings, she studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, began a career as a model and made a name for herself in the upper crust of Paris. She rubs shoulders with the greats of this world and meets the future father of her children, Benjamin Auger, photographer.
From the mid-1960s, Dani appeared on the big screen: she had a string of small roles and appeared in the clip for Dick Rivers, It’s all in your eyes. She released her very first album in 1966: Tomboy. The first stone of an impressive discography. Dani will release more than thirty albums, 45 and 33 rpm. In 1974, she must represent France at Eurovision, but, due to national mourning for President George Pompidou, her trip will be canceled.
The following year, she opened for Claude François during his tour. At the same time, Dani continues her career in the cinema and will play the character that will contribute to her popularity: that of Liliane, in The American night by Francois Truffaut. Dani connects the activities, opens a discotheque in Paris, then withdraws far from the scene. In 2001, she made a successful comeback with the mythical song like a boomerang, in duet with Etienne Daho. This song had been written for her by Serge Gainsbourg, years before.
After a few radio appearances or in stores, Dani publishes in 2020 the album Golden Horizons, the tour of which she was completing at the time of her death. According to her manager, she was preparing the release of another record, called Attention departure. Strange coincidence.