Born in Paris to
Jewish émigrés parents.
Polish Jewish father
Alter Mojze Goldman (born in
Lublin) and a
German Jewish mother, Ruth Ambrunn (born in
Munich). Goldman was the third of four children. As a child, he began his music studies on the violin, then the piano. In 1968, he abandoned classical music studies for American rock and roll and folk music, listening to
the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix and
Aretha Franklin, and emphasising the guitar. His sudden conversion to popular music is loosely chronicled in the song "Un, deux, trois". Meanwhile, Goldman earned a business degree from the
École des hautes études commerciales du Nord (EDHEC) in
Lille. In 1972, he met Catherine, his first wife, with whom he had three children. Goldman first entered the French music scene as a member of a
progressive rock group named
Taï Phong ("great wind" or "
typhoon" in Vietnamese), which released its first album in 1975. Their first song, a moderate hit, was "Sister Jane". After three albums in English (on which he sang and played guitar as well as violin), Goldman was determined to write and sing in French, and this led him to leave the band. Marc Lumbroso saw Goldman's potential and managed to sign him to a five-album contract with
Epic Records. That same year, Goldman released his first album, which he wanted to call
Démodé ("out of fashion"), but the label refused and it was left untitled. (
Démodé has since become its unofficial title.) From the album, "
Il suffira d'un signe" was Goldman's first song to become a significant success. In 1982, he released a second album with no title; this time the intended one was
Minoritaire, which was also rejected as it was deemed not commercial enough. (It has likewise become the album's unofficial title.) The recording includes several hit singles: "Quand la musique est bonne", "Comme toi" (inspired by a picture of a young Jewish girl who died in a
concentration camp, although the heartfelt lyrics never reveal a specific historical context), and "Au bout de mes rêves". This became Goldman's breakthrough album, with about 900,000 copies sold. His third album, released in 1984, was his first with an official title,
Positif. The name was the singer's ironic response to the refusal of his previous two titles and spawned new hits such as "Encore un matin" and "
Envole-moi". It performed even better, with some 1 million units sold. Goldman's fourth album,
Non homologué ("not approved", continuing a trend of ironic and self-deprecating titles), garnered the hit songs "
Je marche seul", "
Je te donne" (a bilingual rock duet, with
Michael Jones singing the English verses and Goldman the French ones) and "
Pas toi". Yet most critics were harsh, deriding Goldman's high-pitched voice as well as his style and demeanour (described as too tame and innocuous) in a collection of softer songs presumably marketed to teenage girls. In reaction, at the end of 1985 Goldman purchased a full-page rebuttal in two major newspapers (
Libération and
France Soir) in which he displayed excerpts from his harshest reviews. He also appended an ironic message for his fans, once again demonstrating his taste for unassuming self-promotion: "Thanks for coming anyway..." ("Merci d'être venus quand même..."). With the intention of making a farewell album, Goldman recorded a special
double album in 1987,
Entre gris clair et gris foncé ("Between light grey and dark grey"). It consisted of one disc with new songs and a second disc with songs from his archive. He would reconsider his decision after the double album launched a string of hits: "Elle a fait un bébé toute seule", "
Puisque tu pars", "
Là-bas" (a duet with
Sirima), and "Il changeait la vie". The album became a major success, with more than 2 million units sold. From 1990 to 1995, Goldman went on to perform in a musical trio called
Fredericks Goldman Jones with
Carole Fredericks (an American singer and chorist who had moved to France in the 1970s, the sister of
Taj Mahal) and Michael Jones. Together they recorded two studio albums,
Fredericks / Goldman / Jones in 1990 and
Rouge in 1993 (inspired by the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the
end of the USSR. The title song features the
Red Army Choir), one live album,
Du New Morning au Zénith, and the trio also released several successful singles: "
Nuit", "
À nos actes manqués", "
Né en 17 à Leidenstadt" (another song about war and how it affects people's lives), "Juste après" (inspired by a TV documentary about the work of
Médecins Sans Frontières in
Congo that showed a missionary sister's harrowing struggle to save a newborn's life), and "
Tu manques". Several of these songs were later re-recorded in English, but they did not find much success in the United Kingdom or the United States. From 1997 to 2003 he returned to performing as a solo act, releasing two albums,
En passant in 1997 and
Chansons pour les pieds in 2001, as well as two live albums,
Tournée 98 En passant and
Un tour ensemble, with new hit songs like "On ira", "Quand tu danses", "Sache que je", "Bonne idée", "Tournent les violons", "Ensemble", "Les choses", "Et l'on n'y peut rien". After a last concert in 2004, he suddenly stopped performing and recording, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. Goldman had remarried in 2001 to Nathalie Thu Hong-Lagier, a young fan who was then studying mathematics and who would later earn her PhD in
pure mathematics. In 2011, to shut down rumours about a possible musical comeback, he published a short text denying any plans for a new album or tour in the foreseeable future. Since then, Goldman has remained elusive and largely absent from the French media. Throughout his career, Goldman has frequently composed for other singers (sometimes using pseudonyms), most notably
Johnny Hallyday (the whole
Gang album in 1985, among his most successful) and
Céline Dion. He wrote and produced two whole albums for her: ''
D'eux in 1995 (released in the US as The French Album
), which is still the best-selling French album in history with 10 million copies sold worldwide, and S'il suffisait d'aimer in 1998. He also worked with Dion on the album 1 fille & 4 types'' along with
Gildas Arzel,
Jacques Veneruso and
Erick Benzi. The songs "
If That's What It Takes", "
I Don't Know" and "Fly" from her album
Falling into You are English-language adaptations of songs Goldman wrote for Céline. Also, her song "Let's Talk About Love" from the
album of the same name is an English adaptation of Goldman's 1987 solo song "
Puisque tu pars". He has also collaborated with
Patricia Kaas,
Garou,
Marc Lavoine,
Gérald De Palmas,
Patrick Fiori,
Khaled ("
Aïcha"),
Lorie and
Florent Pagny, as well as jazzman
Chet Baker,
Supertramp's saxophonist
John Helliwell,
Joe Cocker ("On my way home" from the album
No Ordinary World is an adaptation from "
Là-bas"), "king of soul"
Ray Charles and American songwriter
Diane Warren. On 19 November 2012,
Génération Goldman, a tribute album to Goldman, was released on the
MyMajorCompany France and
M6 Music labels, with a number of artists interpreting Goldman's songs. A second volume followed in 2013. In December 2023, Goldman's song "Pense à nous" premiered on cellist
Gautier Capuçon's album
Destination Paris. It was sung by children's choirs of the Orchestre à l'École Association and the Maîtrise de Radio France de Paris and Bondy.
Personal life From 1975 to 1997, Goldman was married to Catherine Morlet, a psychologist. In 2001, he married Nathalie Thu Hong-Lagier, a mathematician. He is the father of six: Caroline (b. 1975), Michaël (b. 1979) and Nina (b. 1985) with Morlet, and Maya (b. 2004), Kimi (b. 2005) and Rose (b. 2007) with Thu Hong-Lagier. His son Michael Goldman is one of the co-founders of
My Major Company France, a leading
fan-funded music label. His younger brother
Robert Goldman is also a songwriter (often known as J. Kapler). His half-brother
Pierre Goldman, a left-wing intellectual and convicted robber later acquitted by a French court, was murdered in mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1979. == Philanthropy ==