CARLA BRUNI IS playing a guitar down the phone from Paris. “Can you hear that?!” she asks, with glee in her voice. “Michelle Obama gave me this guitar when we met for NATO. It’s a fantastic Gibson guitar and I have it here in my studio. Then I invited her for lunch at the Élysée Palace and I played a Beatles song for her on the guitar. I loved her. She was so kind, so open, so cool.”
Carla’s sense of wonder at having been given such a thoughtful and generous gift by America’s First Lady reveals a lot about her. She is, after all, a former First Lady herself—her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, was President of France from 2007-12. But there’s no sense of self-importance from her. On the contrary, Carla comes across as endearingly shy, with a down-to-earth vibe that belies her own status as a public figure: one who’s already lived through several successful incarnations—as supermodel, singer-songwriter and politician’s wife.
It’s Carla’s singing career that brings us together today. She’s just released her sixth album, Carla Bruni. She writes or co-writes her own material, a collection of tunes that showcase her smoky nightclub voice and place her in the great tradition of the French chanteuse.
Carla says COVID-19 gave her ample time to finish the album in the south of France after the family decamped to their summer home there for several months of lockdown. Bruni has a 19-year-old son, Aurélien, from a relationship with French philosopher and TV host, Raphaël Enthoven, and daughter Giulia, aged nine, with Sarkozy, who also has three sons from previous marriages.
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