RIP Johnny Hallyday

[lacaille0808]

Who is the biggest rockstar you may not have heard of?

The answer is France's Johnny Hallyday. Largely unknown outside of France, he is as big as Elvis in Francophone land. He has sold 110m albums and has graced the limelight for 50 yrs.

He sang in French obviously, though I saw a couple of Youtube videos of him singing in English and IMO, his accent wasn't at all bad.

RIP Monsieur Jean-Phillippe Smet, known as the wonderful Johnny Hallyday.

[Lisa]

A lot of stars started as support acts for Johnny Hallyday tours.

[lacaille0808]

Jimi Hendrix played a supporting act for him.

Today, tens of thousands line up in the cold along the streets of Paris to mourn him. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/09/johnny-hallyday-funeral-paris-tributes-emmanuel-macron

I only came to know about Johnny Hallyday when a few months ago I was googling 'biggest musicians in the world past and present in terms of album sales' and most, according to Wikipedia, are obviously from English speaking countries. Definitely one of the reasons why English has become a dominant World language. But I was more interested in those from outside the Anglophone world who sang in their own language and still made it so big despite their limited markets:

Julio Iglesias- he cleverly sang in Spanish and English- capturing the Anglo and Latin markets
Abba- but they mostly sang in English

The only other three acts who only sang in their own languages are:
Johnny Hallyday, and
two acts from Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists