I notice the orchestrations are a lot more sober and restrained on this album, too…
Yes, and one of the reasons for that is because when I started working on the album, coming up with the songs, I was all on my own. I'm not a hugely gifted arranger, you know. These days I'm lucky enough to work with a bunch of musicians whom I trust completely. They're not interested in trying to impose their own ideas at all costs; they're happy to try and develop mine. And that interaction is basically what produced this album. But I have to say I'm now quite tempted again by the idea of working with someone who knows an awful lot more about music than me. That's the only way to keep learning and progressing!

You've been through a lot of career upheavals in recent years. Is this something you've actively sought to bring about yourself or just one of those things in life?
I'd say I definitely caused the upheavals to happen, although I didn't always consciously want them to. Splitting from Starshooter was definitely my fault. I'd reached the point where I knew I didn't want to play in a rock band any more. I had all these different ideas in my head like working on a cartoon strip or going off to Africa instead. So all that helped bring things to a point where a split was inevitable.
But my recent upheavals have been less deliberate. I was quite happy to keep on bringing out records as the Kent everyone knows on a label I really like (Barclay), working with people I really like. And then all of a sudden everything was turned upside down. It was like someone had come along and pulled the bathplug out and everything went down the tubes. A couple of musicians left me for various reasons, my contract with Barclay reached its term and I was actually starting to get a bit bored of certain people myself. To begin with it felt like the end of the world! It was very hard to accept. Then I realised I just had to let myself go with the flow. At the end of the day it's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that's important. You have to learn to be positive in life, if not you end up living in a permanent state of regret!

 Was it a big shock when your long-term musical accomplice Jacques Bastello left?
Yes, it was, but I've had no problem remaking my musical life without him. Maybe at the end of the day our relationship was purely linked to music, so there's no reason for us to keep on seeing each other now. I thought I had a real friend in Jacques and who knows, maybe it will all fall back into place one day? I don't know. At the moment months seem to have flown by and I've still got this note in my agenda, "call Jacques", and I keep putting the phone call off… I don't think he's particularly upset about it or anything and I'm not either. It's just one of those things. In this business you've got to accept a certain amount of 'unfaithfulness' – if not you don't get to move on in life!

These days, of course, you've got a major new musical accomplice and that's accordionist Arnaud Méthivier…
I've actually worked with Arnaud for at least a dozen years now but it's very much an on and off thing because he's often busy with his own solo career. We've got this very special complicity and understanding and that means that when we play live together I don't have to direct him in any way. Arnaud's got a great career ahead of him – and not just in France either! He also has a very special place in my affections because when my last backing group was falling apart in the middle of my tour I called him and he stepped in at the last minute and saved the day. Arnaud's arrival gave me a real boost. What's more, just as I was sitting down to start composing things myself he turned up with all this music and that's what brought this album into existence, I'm sure of it. Actually, it was Arnaud who wrote the music for the title track, Je ne suis qu'une chanson.

Has getting older had any effect on your work?
Yes, it's had an effect on my songwriting. I love the whole process of observing the way your thoughts evolve as you get older. I think I've always more or less dealt with the same themes in my songs, but your viewpoint inevitably changes with age. And singing's no different from any other profession on that score. When you reach 45 you enter a "critical" phase, especially as society seems to be obsessed by a real cult of youth right now.
It's funny, when you reach the middle of your own life you realise how unfair you've been with older people in the past. Older people are absolutely essential because they teach us how to deal with the future and that's an idea I'm very keen on hammering home. I can't bear the idea that people are thrown on the scrap heap when they reach a certain age while we go on placing young people on pedestals. Ultimately that's just an illusion - and I know because I've been through it!

Are you at all worried about the rise of this new generation of pre-fabricated 'made-for-TV' artists that seem to be record companies' main priority these days?
Well, the problem is not that less artists are successful these days, but that there are more and more people involved in the music business in general. The whole equation has changed. Things used to be a lot more amateur too. These days there are 'schools' out there claiming to train people for this profession. But in my opinion at least 80% of all that is bluff! The 'teachers' are often people who have missed the boat themselves!
But the real problem is you can't have thousands and thousands of young singers dreaming of hitting the big time when at the end of the day there's a podium with three places on it! I think we'd be better off readjusting our values and seeing the worth of other professions too. It's time we did away with this ludicrous notion that only singers deserve the glory!

Are there any new avenues you'd like to explore in your career?
Yes, world music. When you listen to music from a different corner of the world it's like this whole new world opens up to you. Listening to records from Madagascar or Vietnam it's like I get my own private history or geography lesson. And it's great to see that in countries which don't have proper record industries in place people are still making music. That really puts our crazy industry in the West in perspective. We're really getting sucked into this mad spiral where record companies have become totally obsessed with short-term profits, Internet paranoia and sales-driven policies.

So do you think there's a risk of musical creativity being killed off by this insistence on profitability?
Yes, absolutely. On the one hand there's more and more pressure on artists to make records that sell and on the other the government are questioning the special artistic status of "intermittents" (which allows actors and musicians access to subsidies and dole money). That's something that only exists in France and I believe it goes a long way to promoting creative freedom. I think it's time a reform was brought in on a European level to stop these attempts to do away with artists' rights. Look at what's happened to musical creation in Germany and the Netherlands – it's become completely ghettoised! They've completely lost their identity these days.

You seem to be one of the very few French singers who take an interest in what's going on elsewhere in Europe…
That's true and I think it's a very sad state of affairs. I mean, everyone agrees that Europe should exist on a cultural and human level, but you have to put that philosophy into action. It's no good just talking about it! When I go out and play in Berlin it's nothing like my French tours. I sleep on friends' sofas and go round gigging on the local club circuit. It's all on a completely different scale. But you have to accept that, it's important to get out there and find out what's going on with our European neighbours. Singers are far too easily satisfied with being a 'prophet' in their own land. Pop music has become totally global these days. Every country's got its own Obispo! But in France we still have musical styles which are very much a product of our own culture, like fusion music, for example. And if we stop doing that in favour of more global styles it will simply disappear.

What about the new tour you're about to kick off?
Well, I think there's been an element of standing back and taking stock of things as far as my live presentation goes. I really wanted to go back to how I was in the early days, you know, just me playing guitar on my own and acting on stage. I wanted there to be a pure essence of songs this time round. I didn't want to waste time spouting nonsense between numbers like certain other singers do. I wanted my shows to be about music!