Pierre Garand began playing guitar at the age of three, at the encouragement of his father. He went on to serve in the military and started a band in 1992 called the Untouchables. In 1997, he was discovered by
Luc Plamondon while singing American
blues tunes in a
Sherbrooke bar. He was drafted by Plamondon to play the role of
Quasimodo in his musical
Notre-Dame de Paris, which made him a star in France and launched his singing career. He went on to play the role for three years. His first studio album,
Seul, became the best-selling French record of 2001 and remains one of the best-selling French albums of all time, achieving two million sales in Europe and going three times Platinum in Canada. He continued his string of hits with a
live album and released a second studio record,
Reviens, in 2003. Sales for his third album,
Garou, remained strong, and he issued the English crossover record
Piece of My Soul in 2008. It debuted at No. 2 in Canada and No. 3 in France. Despite this success, the album became his first in France not to reach Platinum status, although it became his best-selling record in North America in seven years. His next album,
Gentleman cambrioleur, featured cover songs in French and English and became his first record to miss the top five in France, where it modestly peaked at No. 35, staying on the charts for 17 weeks. He released
Version intégrale in 2010, which became another top 40 hit in France and Canada. Garou performed the
Jean-Pierre Ferland song "Un peu plus haut, un peu plus loin" at the
2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Vancouver. He has also performed at the charity event
Les Enfoirés for the past 19 years. In 2011, he was cast in the lead role of Zark in the Cirque du Soleil musical
Zarkana, in New York City. Since 2010, Garou has released five further studio albums:
Rhythm and Blues (2012),
Au milieu de ma vie (2013), ''It's Magic!
(2014), Soul City
(2019), and Garou joue Dassin'' (2022). In 2025, he released
Un meilleur lendemain, the first album in his career to consist entirely of songs written by him. ==Collaborations==