Carlan Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, Italy on 23 December 1968. The daughter of a rich Torinese manufacturer at the head of a large Italian petroleum company and of a concert pianist, the young Carla was only to spend the first five years of her life in Italy. In the face of a wave of kidnappings and assassination attempts by the Red Brigades, a far-left Italian terrorist organisation, her family sought exile in France and went to live in Paris in 1973.

With a music-loving grandfather and a musically talented mother, as well as a father who composed opera in his spare time, Carla was surrounded by music from a tender age. After the piano, at nine years old she discovered the guitar, which was to become her talisman. Impassioned by literature, she started to compose her first songs and write her first lyrics.

Top model to top of the pops

In 1997, after ten years at the top, the star model of the 90s finally stepped down from the catwalk so that she could dedicate herself to her real passion, music. She took singing lessons, all the time continuing to write and compose. Two years later she offered her composition skills to Julien Clerc, and ended up writing six titles of his 2000 album, “Si j’étais elle”.

The experience gave her the confidence to embark on her own first album. With the help of Louis Bertignac, friend and former member of the group Téléphone, she wrote and composed all twelve songs in “Quelqu’un m’a dit”, which came out in 2002. Although some, even before its release, dismissed it as the whim of a retired model using her fame to become a singer, the album was to reveal the hidden talents of a singer poles apart from the cold beauty of a photograph.

Her simple and original folk ballads, delivered in her gentle and slightly broken tones, delighted both critics and public. Carla Bruni was the surprise new talent of 2003, and a year later she received the French music award, Victoire de la musique, as best female artist of the year. Her first album has sold 1.2 million copies in France and 800,000 overseas, making her one of the new hopes of French chanson.

On 24 October 2003, she appeared on stage with the Canadian, Daniel Lanois at the Elysée-Montmartre in Paris. A couple of weeks later, on 6 November, she performed a short concert during the Inrock festival in the French capital. After breaking in her own show in concert halls in the Parisian suburbs, she finally performed at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris from 17 to 21 February 2004, accompanied by Louis Bertignac on guitar. She was back in the capital from 11 to 29 May at the Trianon.

Slightly put off track by her huge success, the young singer struggled to find inspiration again. After a few rare concerts in Paris and the provinces, she went back to work and got involved with a number of other musicians. She appeared on albums by Julien Clerc and Louis Bertignac, in “Sol en cirque”, in a duet with Jean-Louis Murat and Aldo Romano, and even on a disk produced in memory of Serge Gainsbourg.

It was not until January 2007 that Carla Bruni’s new album, entitled “No Promises” finally came out. Once more accompanied by Louis Bertignac, Carla chose to set to music texts from British and American poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Yeats, Auden, Emily Dickinson and many others. Instead of choosing the easy option, she has moved away from the world that helped her first album to be such a success, by singing in English.

"No Promises" ended up selling a respectable amount of copies, but Carla’s second album fell far short of the runaway success generated by "Quelqu’un m’a dit."

Carla Bruni made the headlines again in December 2007 when the international press reported that she and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, were involved in a serious relationship. On 2 February 2008, the couple married at a strictly private ceremony in the Elysée Palace and the singer officially became Madame Bruni-Sarkozy.

At the beginning of March 2008, France's new First Lady made her first official state visit abroad. Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni were invited to England where Queen Elizabeth II hosted a special reception for the presidential couple at Buckingham Palace.

Four months later, Carla Bruni re-emerged on the recording front, having decided to combine her position as France's First Lady with her ongoing singing career. Her third album was released on 11 July 2008 and was called "Comme si de rien n'était" (the title of a photographic work by her brother, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi, who died in 2006). The release of "Comme si de rien n'était" caused a huge stir in the international media, journalists and leader writers seemingly unable to decide whether to discuss the album in terms of music or politics.

Carla's third album was recorded during the winter of 2007/2008 at the Labomatic studio in Paris with renowned French producer Dominique Blanc-Francard at the controls. All the lyrics on the album (apart from Michel Houellebecq's poem "La Possibilité d'une île", the cover of Bob Dylan's "You Belong to Me" and the reworking of "Il vecchio e il bambino", a song by the Italian anarchist Francesco Guccini) were penned by Carla herself. The majority of the songs on this new album revolve around the themes of love and the passing of time and "Salut marin" is a touching tribute to the singer's brother, Virginio.

Musically speaking, Carla's third album finds the singer moving away from the simple folk approach of her debut album, "Quelqu'un m'a dit", and branching out in a new direction to flirt directly with pop and experiment with a broader spectrum of arrangements. The first single release, "L'Amoureuse", features sumptuous string arrangements by Benjamin Biolay (the most sixties-influenced of French orchestrators) while Julien Clerc, a long-time friend of Carla's, wrote the music for "Déranger les pierres."

Carla Bruni's record label has announced that all royalties from "Comme si de rien n'était" (which features cover photography by the celebrity photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino) are to be donated to charity. Meanwhile, the Italian-born singer has acquired French nationality.

July 2008.