Early life Mirwais Ahmadzaï was born in
Lausanne, Switzerland to an Afghan father and an Italian mother. The family lived in
Kabul, Afghanistan for a while before relocating to Paris.
Taxi Girl and Juliette et les indépendants Resultantly becoming known in France for this reason for the better part of two decades, Mirwais was a guitarist in the punk group
Taxi Girl for eight years, before forming the
acoustic outfit "Juliette et les Indépendants" with his then-girlfriend Juliette. Taxi Girl's first
EP, "(S.O.S Mannequin)", was released in early 1980 on Pathé Marconi/EMI. "For a teenager, the late 70s were a strange mixture of disco music and punk, and it was okay to like them all," he says. Taxi Girl captured the punk rock power of
The Stooges, the techno futurism of
Kraftwerk and the disco euphoria of
Giorgio Moroder and molded the diametrically opposed styles into an electrifying new-wave sound that entertained and inspired a generation of listeners bored by the complacency of 80s French pop. Even the current darlings of the French electronic music scene, such as
Daft Punk and
Air, continue to namecheck Taxi Girl as a major influence on their artistic directions.
Solo career In 1990, Mirwais released his eponymous debut solo album
Mirwais which contained nine tracks and was performed by Mirwais exclusively in French; he had not yet learned English. In 1998, he signed to French
independent record label Naïve Records and released the
single "
Disco Science". This single was a success as a club dance hit and appeared in the
soundtrack for the
Guy Ritchie film,
Snatch and the 2006
Luc Besson film
Arthur and the Invisibles. In August 2000, he released the album
Production, which included the single "Paradise (Not For Me)" made in collaboration with
Madonna. It also included two minor
chart hits in the
UK Singles Chart: "Disco Science" (2000, #68) and "Naive Song" (2000, #50).
Madonna Madonna recruited him for writing and production collaboration on four of her studio albums:
Music (2000),
American Life (2003),
Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005), and
Madame X (2019). He also co-wrote a song that would later appear on her
greatest hits album
Celebration as a previously unreleased track. Mirwais contributed the following tracks to the Madonna albums: •
Music: "
Music", "Impressive Instant", "Nobody's Perfect", "Paradise (Not For Me)", "
Don't Tell Me", "I Deserve It". •
American Life: Co-produced the entire record and co-wrote all songs with Madonna, with the exception of "
Nothing Fails", "X-Static Process" and "Easy Ride". •
Confessions on a Dance Floor: "Future Lovers", "Let It Will Be", bonus tracks "Fighting Spirit" and "Super Pop", and the deleted tracks "Triggering" and "Keep the Trance". •
Celebration (2009 "greatest hits" compilation):
iTunes bonus track "It's So Cool", a previously unreleased track from
American Life. •
Madame X: "
Medellín", "
Dark Ballet", "
God Control", "Batuka", "Killers Who Are Partying", "
I Don't Search I Find", deluxe edition track "Extreme Occident", and box set-exclusive tracks "Funana" and "Ciao Bella". The
Music album was nominated for three
Grammy Awards including
Record of the Year. "Music" won several MTV Europe awards. He was also involved in the writing and production of the
title track to the movie
Die Another Day, co-written and performed by Madonna. The song was nominated for a
Golden Globe for
Best Original Song in 2003.
Fischerspooner Mirwais also co-produced two tracks "Cloud" and "Never Win" on
Fischerspooner's second studio album
Odyssey, released in 2005.
Y.A.S. He worked on a project called
Y.A.S. The official website stated: "YAS is the name of Mirwais' new project with the singer and composer
Yasmine Hamdan. The album was released in France on 8 June 2009. All songs are performed by her. It is 'Arabic Avant-Garde Music'". In an interview on 13 January 2007 published on lecourrier.ch, Mirwais said, "At the moment I work with Yasmine Hamdan (one half of Lebanon electro-duo
Soapkills). The idea is that today, in Western culture, we hear about Arabs everyday – in a bad way, because of terrorism, etc – but we lack of cultural representations coming from those countries that could mix with the western culture, whereas this youth is eager to. I don't want to do world music, but a good western production with a real Arab identity." Y.A.S.' album,
Arabology was released in May 2009, with the first single, "Get It Right", following in June.
Uffie After remixing "
Pop the Glock", Mirwais became one of the producers of
Uffie's album
Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans, for which he produced four songs "
ADD SUV", "Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans", "Illusion of Love" and "Hong Kong Garden", one of which featured
Pharrell Williams ("
ADD SUV") and one which featured Mattie Safer ("Illusion of Love").
The Retrofuture Mirwais announced in early January 2021 via his Instagram page that the release of his third album
The Retrofuture would take place in 2021. The music video of the first single, "2016 – My Generation", premiered on Nowness on 19 April 2021. The music video was directed by Ludovic Houplain/ H5paris, based on an original idea by Ahmadzaï. "2016 – My Generation" was then released through all DSP platforms on 21 April 2021, making it the first single Ahmadzaï released in 20 years. He described it as "the description of a world that is already there, but in an accumulated form".
The Retrofuture is a concept album that focuses on dematerialisation and falsification. Each song is preceded by the name of a year, as in the title of "2016 – My Generation". ==Discography==