Friday's French music break - Imany, "You will never know"

Friday's French music break this week is from a woman with the most extraordinary voice.

Love it or hate it, "You will never know" by Imany cannot leave you indifferent.

Imany (screenshot from interview on France 2 television)

It's the first single taken from her debut album "The shape of a broken heart" and would, on the face of it, appear to be the French music scene's discovery of the summer as far as the media here is concerned.

Much has been written about her over the past couple of months and she has made multiple appearances on both television and radio.

But musical success has come neither easily nor quickly for the 30-year-old, who said in a recent interview that it was, "A dream come true" but one which "had taken some time to fulfil."

That's mainly down to her having spent seven years based in New York as a model, a career she didn't exactly plan but "fell into".

Born in France, Nadia Mladjao (her real name) is of Comorian origin and one of 10 children and although she had always wanted to be a singer she also had some hang-ups about her voice.

"That's what I wanted to do when I was seven, but I also thought that it was something other people did and not me," she said.

"In addition I was a bit self-conscious about my voice because when I was small nobody told me that I had a good voice, rather they said it was a 'big' one and I didn't think singing was for me."

Any thoughts of pursuing her childhood dream were put on the back burner when Nadia was "discovered" in the Paris metro and there followed seven years modelling in what she described as an "average career complete with its highs and lows" and during which, when she didn't have work, she continued to write.

"Nadia" became "Imany" ("faith" in Swahili) - a name she plumped for without knowing its meaning because, "At the time there were plenty of girls who worked for the agency who were called 'Nadia' and I didn't want to be 'Nadia number four'."

A fitting choice as it turned out as, "Without faith we'll never achieve anything," she said.

And three years ago, according to her biography on her official website, not exactly thrilled with life as a model, she gave it all up, took the risk of returning to Paris with just "A few clothes, some photos and half-a-dozen original songs."

Hard work, knocking on doors, a string of small gigs as the opening act for other artists and getting heard by the right people paid off, and last year she had enough of a reputation and self-penned material to record her first album with a number of well-known and highly-respected French musicians.

The result was the album "The shape of a broken heart", one which has brought about plenty of comparisons with the Grammy award-winning US singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman.

And that's largely because of Imany's resonant and powerful voice - the very same one she had something of a complex about when she was a girl.

"It doesn't annoy me at all when I'm called 'the new Tracy Chapman' because I'm a fan," she says.

"I just think it's a little bit of an exaggeration as there's only one Tracy Chapman."

Adriana and Christian Karembeu separate

It's official. What the French daily France Soir calls, "One of the most glamorous couples of French showbiz" are to separate.

Adriana Karembeu (screenshot from interview with Belgian daily La Dernière Heure/Les Sports in Feb 2011)

After almost 13 years of marriage the model Adriana Karembeu and her husband, the former French international football player Christian, are to split, according to an interview Adriana gave in Thursday's edition of the weekly magazine Paris Match.

The news doesn't exactly come as a surprise says France Soir, "Especially not to readers of celebrity magazines," as rumours had been circulating for some time that the Slovakian-born model was not happy with their lifestyle, her husband's hectic schedule and "the fact that they didn't appear to have a life together."

"I wanted to makes things clear," she told Paris Match.

"We have always been a very high-profile couple and in recent weeks I've been upset to see photographs of me with other men appearing in the press and speculation that I had a lover," she continued.

"The truth is I've never cheated on my husband but we haven't been together for a couple of months now."

While Adriana maintains in the interview that she had informed her husband about her decision to "go public" his version of how he found out is quite different.

Christian, a member of France's 1998 World Cup winning side has recently published a book (together with journalists Anne Pitoiset et Claudine Wéry) "Kanak" in which he recounts his childhood in New Caledonia and the story of his family.

He has been giving a series of interviews to promote the book but, "Had not alluded to the separation," Adriana told Paris Match, "Because he didn't know what to say. When I 'phoned him to tell him that I had granted you an interview, he seemed relieved."

But that wasn't quite the story Christian told on RTL radio on Wednesday.

"I think she's quite simply going to announce our separation," he said when asked for his reaction to details that had been leaked of the interview that was to appear in Paris Match the following day.

"I'm not in the habit of talking about my private life in public," he continued.

"But I didn't know about this interview when it happened, I was told about it afterwards."

Whatever the case their separation is official and marks the end of a relationship which began, as the French daily Aujourd'hui en France - Le Parisien says, "In the most romantic of manners aboard a Paris-Milan flight in 1996".

They were married in 1998.