Much like songbird Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux spent her teenage years busking the busy streets of Paris. Just like the ‘little sparrow’, Madeleine befriended the city’s street musicians and made its Latin quarter her first performing stage. Years later, Peyroux would cite iconic Piaf as an influence on her music and record a rendition of the classic La Vie En Rose, soulfully capturing the tune’s romanticism and melancholy.

Much like songbird Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux spent her teenage years busking the busy streets of Paris. Just like the ‘little sparrow’, Madeleine befriended the city’s street musicians and made its Latin quarter her first performing stage. Years later, Peyroux would cite iconic Piaf as an influence on her music and record a rendition of the classic La Vie En Rose, soulfully capturing the tune’s romanticism and melancholy.

Born in Athens, Georgia in 1974, Madeleine “grew up in a house filled with music” and from an early age “instinctively realised music’s soothing power” but it was her teenage years in the French capital that turned the childhood notion into an all-consuming vocation for life.    

Young Madeleine moved to Paris with her mother in 1987 following her parents divorce. “To soothe me during the upheaval”, she recalls, “I was given a guitar and took to playing in the streets almost immediately.”

The curious teenager started skipping school to frequent the city’s Latin Quarter where street musicians dwelled, keen to learn about their music and way of life. At 16, the fearless teen joined the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band with whom she toured the streets of Europe, discovering Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday while “voraciously picking up all the songs and all the guitar playing” she could.

The two-year touring adventure set Madeleine on a creative path for life and proved to be a gateway to greater things. In 1991 the band travelled to New York where Madeleine’s unique talents were spotted by Atlantic Records’ Yves Beauvais. The young singer declined the music executive’s initial record deal offer but relented several years later and in 1996 her breakthrough album Dreamland was released.

Dreamland sold a striking 200,000 copies and Madeleine’s dusky voice was likened to that of Jazz greats Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Featuring top musicians Marc Ribot, Vernon ReidCyrus Chestnut, Charlie Giordano, Greg Cohen, Kenny Wollesen, Regina Carter, Leon Parker and James Carter, the album included Madeleine’s renditions of Holiday’s Gettin' Some Fun Out of Life, Bessie Smith’s Lovesick Blues and Fats Waller’s I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.

Dreamland cemented Madeleine Peyroux as a ‘classic’ musical talent that was here to stay, and the soulful singer found herself touring the world, singing with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and opening for Cesaria Evora.

Extensive touring took its toll on Madeleine’s voice and Jazz’s new star failed to complete recording sessions for her second Atlantic record. Unable to “make money without singing”, Madeleine made several futile attempts at odd jobs, and soon “went into hibernation”.

The new millennium signaled new hope with a return to the Big Apple and a Sony Records deal but the collaboration was short lived. Madeleine was dropped from the label in a move she remembers as casting a “big blow” to her ego.

The defiant artist rolled up her sleeves, continued playing on the street, booked herself in New York clubs through local promoters who remembered her Dreamland heyday and began collaborating with William Galison.

Madeleine’s never-say-die spirit bore fruit. In 2003 she signed to Rounder Records and embarked on a game-changing, lifelong collaboration with multi Grammy winning producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Walter Becker, Herbie Hancock).

The prolific partnership has now spanned many years and created universally acclaimed albums, hailed by many as timeless classics.

Careless Love (2004) was a rich collection of cover versions with tunes from Bob Dylan to James P Johnson, and included Peyroux’s milestone rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love. For the sole original on the album, producer Klein and Jesse Harris co-wrote Madeleine’s signature tune and many fans’ favorite, Don’t Wait Too Long. With sales of half a million copies the album shifted Peyroux from the exclusive Jazz realm into the mainstream arena.

Madeleine went on to collaborate with Klein on her 2006 album Half the Perfect World, and Bare Bones in 2009, her first try at an album of entirely new compositions.

In 2011 Madeleine interrupted her Klein collaboration streak with Standing On the Rooftop, produced by Craig Street. Aside from renditions of Lennon/McCartney’s Martha My Dear, and Dylan’s I Threw It All Away it was mostly new material including The Kind You Can’t Afford written with The Stones’ own Bill Wyman.

In 2013, Madeleine released The Blue Room, her and Larry Klein’s sensuous tribute to Ray Charles’s iconic album Modern Sounds in Country and Western MusicThe Blue Room included tracks from the 1962 timeless original as well as Ray Charles’s distinctive style applied to contemporary songs, all masterfully accompanied by Vince Mendoza’s mesmerizing string arrangements. Helik Hadar’s tonally nuanced perfection earned a Grammy nomination for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

She self-produced her next album, Secular Hymns, in 2016, recorded live at a church in Oxfordshire, England. A collaboration with her touring trio, guitarist Jon Herington (Steely Dan) and bassist Barak Mori (Avishai Cohen) the album features an eclectic mix of Jazz, soul, dub and blues, with covers of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Townes Van Zandt and Willie Dixon.

 In 2019, Madeleine released Anthem, her next collaboration with Klein. Reflecting on the contemporary political conversation, Anthem featured all new songs (excepting the title track by Leonard Cohen), co-written with Larry Klein, guitarist and lyricist David Baerwald, organist Patrick Warren and drummer Brian MacLeod.

Thirty years after her formative busking days Peyroux is the proud curator of nine beguiling albums and an accomplished performer with sell out worldwide tours under her belt. Her atmospheric version of Serge Gainsborough’s La Javanaise was used in the soundtrack of Oscar Winner The Shape of Water and her countless accolades include the coveted BBC International Artist Of The Year honour.

Madeleine’s thirst for creative exploration is unfading and her willingness to face creative challenges remains as solid now as it was three decades ago.

With endearing passion and great curiosity the unstoppable genre-defying virtuoso continues her search for the good and examines life with the treasured William Congreve belief that Music has charms to soothe the savage beast.

Madeleine might attribute her success to “mostly luck” but to the industry and loyal fans alike, it is the immense talent and utter dedication to her craft that shines through. “Peyroux is a tremendous talent and almost a total intuitive” reflects Larry Klein, “she has the capacity to get the magic. When she sings and plays her guitar, great things happen.”

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War Toys® is releasing a hauntingly-beautiful cover of the 1980s, antiwar hit “It’s a Mistake,” recorded for us by legendary singer/songwriter Madeleine Peyroux.
Learn more here

Madeleine Peyroux's extraordinary journey is one of music industry’s most compelling. 

Eight albums and 22 years since her debut Dreamland, Peyroux continues to challenge the confines of jazz, venturing into the fertile fields of contemporary music with unfading curiosity.

Peyroux’s new album, Anthem, finds the singer-songwriter collaborating with writers/musicians Patrick Warren (Bonnie Raitt, JD Souther, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Lana Del Rey, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Brian MacLeod (Sara Bareilles, Leonard Cohen, Tina Turner, Ziggy Marley) and David Baerwald (Joni Mitchell, David and David, Sheryl Crow), who are also the basic rhythm section players on the album. Together, they cast a sober, poetic, and at times philosophical eye on the current state of the world. 

Produced and co-written by Larry Klein, the album came to life during the pivotal 2016 US elections, with the writers absorbing a “constant stream of news” over many months. The “consciously not too preachy” songs, fuse Peyroux’s, at times political outlook, with glimpses into her personal world. Honed and patiently refined with fellow writers they mix the public with the personal, striking that perfect equilibrium of dark humour and compassion.

Anthem is an album born out of the team being “together in one room, musing over world events and letting personal experiences spark ideas”. David Baerwald’s sadness over the passing of poet John Ashbery, ignited thoughts of much admired figures lost over the years and paved the path for All My Heroes. Baerwald’s loss gave rise to feelings of awe at these figures’ trailblazing ability to guide and “light fires in the shadows”, but also brought to light their very human vulnerability. 

Inspiration for the evocative Lullaby, written by Baerwald, Klein, MacLeod, Peyroux and Warren, came from “the image of a solitary woman in the midst of a vast open sea singing to her child, or possibly herself, as she faces the chasm of the world.” With engaging empathy, the song paints a haunting picture of the displaced person’s desperation, as she is tormented by memories of “a time before the war”, in a boat paddling towards the unknown. 

Anthem weaves the colourful stories of people confronting life's challenges in a multitude of ways. With pathos and a hint of irony it laments over financial tribulations in Down On Me, speaks of disappointment and unfulfilled dreams in the bluesy Ghosts of Tomorrow and delivers a scathingly poignant social commentary in The Brand New Deal. Coming ten years after Bare Bones, the singer-songwriter’s previous album of original songs, Anthem finds Peyroux wiser with finer articulation powers. Inspired by her idol Leonard Cohen’s ability to “suffer for the work, but still present the listener with just a friendly thought”, Peyroux sends a spiritual but clear message of hope, optimism and resilience in the face of a turbulent reality.

There are two covers in this album. Paul Eluard’s WW2 poem Liberté, and the title track, Leonard Cohen’s monumental Anthem, which also marks Peyroux’s third interpretation of the iconic poet’s work.

Soon becoming Peyroux’s “personal anthem”, Cohen’s soulful masterpiece “tied together all the stories on the record”, with uncanny relevance and topical worldly observation.

It was Cohen’s astonishing ability to tap into the human psyche and “make you think about things without forcing you into it”, that was the underlying thread throughout the project, leading to a more fluid style of writing, “that is about saying something rather than saying everything.” 

Anthem’s lighter tunes include On My Own and On A Sunday Afternoon and 70’s sounding Party Tyme which “has some darkness to it.”

A key track on the album is Paul Eluard’s poem Liberté which came to Peyroux’s attention when a family friend requested she contribute a song to the documentary On the Tips of One’s Toes (Sur La Pointe des Pieds), telling the story of her gravely ill son and the family dealing with his fatal illness (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy). A well-known poem in France and recently set to music by French rocker Marc Lavoine, “Liberté was already in the air following the Paris terror attack”. It came up for Peyroux and Klein as they were trying to put music to a sequence in the documentary showing the young boy going on daily outings and activities. It evoked questions about the parents’ ordeal of “living with the knowledge that their son will not live a full life”, and triggered thoughts of “life’s greatest questions about mortality, overcoming adversity and man’s place in the grand scheme of things”. 

The 21-verse poem was edited down to fit the album’s format and its stanzas adapted, before Peyroux and Klein wrote their original composition. Delivered in French and encompassing the entire human experience, Liberté begins with the lines “On my school notebooks, On my school desk and the trees”, to convey the essence of childhood and growing up. It goes on to touch on adulthood, romantic loneliness, and the many facets of human life, before finally speaking of illness, death and recovery. “With every verse Eluard mentions different places, imaginary and real where he would write 'the name’ but the name itself remains a mystery until the all revealing last line “I was born to know you, To name you, Liberty”. Under Klein’s sensitive production, the arresting poem assumes an enchanting folksy simplicity, with only Klein’s acoustic guitar and Warren’s atmospheric synth strings to accompany Peyroux’s mesmerising voice. 

Anthem is Peyroux’s “biggest project to date”, with the artist investing many months of hands-on involvement in the studio, “exploring processed sounds and editing in post tracking. Special in that it was written with the group of musicians/writers who also played on it, “this album was about discovering the original songs as they were being recorded” and mastering the courage to “let the songs choose their own path.” The new album includes several songs bearing Peyroux’s distinctive, instantly recognizable style including On My Own and Sunday afternoon, but Anthem’s spirit was that of exploring new styles whilst resting safe in the knowledge that “if you are loyal to yourself, there should always be a thread running through your music.”

“Music has the power to soothe the savage breast” asserted the poet William Congreve, articulating that the arts have the power to heal. A notion subscribed to by many, including acclaimed musician Madeleine Peyroux, who in 2017 harnessed the healing power of song for her Anthem album and world tour (2018-2019). In an attempt to address “our torrid political climate”, the artist employed her intimate, personal style of folk-pop songwriting coupled with spellbinding jazz driven delivery to convey thought-provoking reflections on country, self and everything in between. 

Madeleine has spent much of her thirty-year career on the road, perfecting the live-performing skills she cultivated as a teenager busking in Paris. “Touring has become part of my make up” says the celebrated musician, “after years on the road, not touring would be hard for my psyche at this point.” The Jazz virtuoso is ready to travel “down the soothing path" again with her aptly titled trio The Dreamers. 

Trios have “great dynamic presence” explains Madeleine, “leaving just enough natural empty space around every sound so as to allow the listener to fill that with dreams”.  Starting in April 2020, Madeleine Peyroux, keyboardist Andy Ezrin (David Sanborn, Chris Botti, Joe Jackson, Christopher Cross) and drummer Graham Hawthorne (David Byrne, Paul Simon, Harry Belafonte) will weave their spell on audiences across America and Europe. 

The three come together to create a lavish bed for Madeleine’s sultry brand of torch song vocals, and self-styled guitar playing. True to Madeleine’s musical style, they appropriate an eclectic list of cover songs and make them their own, as they effortlessly meld romance with modernism, early blues, jazz and rock and roll with the impressionists.

Audiences can expect to hear potent tunes from the politically-charged Anthem, classics from the artist’s extensive back catalogue, originals and much-loved covers. All performed to Madeleine’s trademark high-quality, laidback style, fine-tuned by the trio over the two-year Anthem tour.  “With this trio I would like to soothe and be soothed” said Peyroux, "have fun, speak truth and feel good."

Here's the backstory behind this single from Madeleine:

"I was living in a little SRO (single occupancy dwelling) in Brooklyn in 2005. I had just put out Careless Love and was touring quite a bit but luck had it I was home on one of the nights that PBS was playing Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home about Bob Dylan.

The scene where Dylan remembers Liam Clancy was so moving to me. Perhaps because my father had just passed and I was venturing into this music business again. Whatever the reason, I tried to write down the quote several days later before going back on the road, and stuck the scrap of paper in my passport,  where it’s been ever since. Apparently I changed the original to fit my needs because it’s backwards,  upside down, and just different. Anyway, it came up in conversation this year, as something I rely on in dark times. My friend and deeply admired colleague, Richard Julian, suggested I write that song. Thanks to Richard’s help producing and singing on it, to Marvin Sewell and Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen’s artistry, and to the magical Brad Jones who did the mix, this song No Meanness is the result. "

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