Mitsou Gélinas

Biography

Mitsou Annie Marie Gélinas (born September 1, 1970, in Loretteville, Quebec) is a Canadian pop singer, businesswoman, television and radio host, and actress. She is credited as Mitsou Gélinas when acting, but records simply as Mitsou.

== Background == Born in Loretteville, Quebec, Mitsou is the granddaughter of Quebec actor and playwright Gratien Gélinas. Her younger sister, Abeille Gélinas, has also been an actress and television host. She got involved in acting and modelling as a child, notably in the French-Canadian soap opera Terre humaine, but also began to pursue singing in her teenage years.

== Career ==

=== Early career === In 1988, she signed with Canadian independent Isba Records and released her first single, "Bye Bye Mon Cowboy" (composed and produced by Jean-Pierre Isaac), which became a pop hit across Canada, an extremely rare feat for a francophone song, in 1989. Later that year, she followed with her debut, multicultural-themed album, El Mundo which also spawned the singles "La Corrida" and "Les Chinois". She received her first Juno Award nomination, for Most Promising Female Vocalist, at the Juno Awards of 1990.

=== Terre des hommes and "Dis-moi, dis-moi" === Later in 1990, she released her follow-up album, Terre des hommes. Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats wrote the title track, in addition to her first English-language song "A Funny Place (The World Is)". The first single, "Mademoiselle Anne", featured Mitsou dressed as a man in the video. In 1991, the second single, "Dis-moi, dis-moi", put Mitsou back in the spotlight with a controversial video that showed her and several male and female models nude in a shower room, as well as a scene where she kissed her own reflection in a mirror. The video, which was released only a few months after Madonna's "Justify My Love", was banned from regular rotation by MuchMusic as the Madonna video had been – technically, the video was not fully banned from the network, as the programming committee ruled that the late-night program City Limits was allowed to play it, but as a mainstream pop song incompatible with the show's alternative rock format, the program refused to do so. Notably, the video for "Dis-moi, dis-moi" was not banned on Much's French-language sister station MusiquePlus, but in fact was placed in heavy rotation; Mitsou's manager Pierre Gendron attributed the difference to English Canada being more prudish than French Canada. Ottawa Citizen journalist Jay Stone additionally highlighted the absurdity of the situation by noting that since MusiquePlus was carried in the parts of the city served by Skyline Cable, but not in the parts served by Maclean-Hunter, that meant that a viewer's ability to see the video on television in Ottawa depended solely on whether they lived east or west of Bank Street. Having banned two high-profile pop videos within a few months of each other, MuchMusic created a new occasional late-night series, Too Much 4 Much, on which they would play banned videos along with forum and panel discussions on the controversies these videos raised. Due to the controversy, Mitsou's single again garnered radio airplay across Canada despite being in French. In fall 1991, Mitsou faced some controversy when she declined to attend that year's Félix Award ceremonies, despite receiving a nomination for Best Pop-Rock Show, due to Gendron's opposition to ADISQ's $640 annual membership fee. Roch Voisine also later refused to attend the ceremony, claiming that the organization didn't serve the interests of Quebec musicians. At the Juno Awards of 1992, Mitsou was nominated for Best Female Vocalist, and Alain DesRochers was nominated for Best Music Video for "Dis-moi, dis-moi".

=== Heading West === In 1992 she released the followup EP Heading West, which featured several of her earlier singles alongside the new single "Deep Kiss", and covers of Cyndi Lauper's "Heading West" and Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz". The album initially received a Juno nomination for Francophone Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 1993, sparking some controversy when the Juno Awards subsequently rescinded the nomination on the grounds that the album didn't meet the criteria of being at least 80 per cent francophone. The award committee claimed that the album's failure to qualify in the category had "slipped through the cracks" due to a last-minute submission, but Mitsou herself dismissed the controversy as an unimportant "tempest in a thimble". In 1992 she also made her film acting debut with appearances in Danièle J. Suissa's television film Prince Lazure and Richard Ciupka's romantic comedy-drama film Coyote.

=== Tempted === In 1993, she followed it up with her first full-English album Tempted. The lead single "Everybody Say Love" was written by RuPaul, who offered it to her after they met while she was working with RuPaul's production and songwriting collaborator Jimmy Harry.

=== Return to French-language music === She returned to recording primarily French-language material for her 1994 album Ya Ya, which included cover versions of songs popular in Quebec in the '60s and '70s, such as Joël Denis's French-language version of the Lee Dorsey song "Ya Ya", and Marc Hamilton's "Comme j'ai toujours envie d'aimer". She followed up in 1996 with a Christmas album entitled Noël. Her next album, Mitsou (Éponyme), was released in 1999, featuring hip-hop-influenced beats and a street-oriented rock sound. She also co-wrote and co-produced all the tracks. The club-oriented EP MitsouVibe, comprising new remixes of past singles, followed in 2002.