"I will continue to write songs, to record them perhaps but in secret, in my will", confides the artist met at his home by AFP.

"You have to know how to say + it's over +. I do it with this album. I don't want to sing sitting down like Reggiani ... Even Aznavour should have stopped earlier", underlines the interpreter of "P'tites femmes de Pigalle " and "Adventures in adventures", hits among many others in nearly sixty years of career.

“I have mobility difficulties … At my age, as soon as I walk, I suffer a lot”, confides the singer whose last tour was canceled by the pandemic.

"It tore my heart out. Now I can't last two hours on stage."

For the farewell album, Serge Lama celebrates his reunion with the arranger Jean-Claude Petit, with whom he had shaped his first successes like "I am sick" and "The singer is twenty years old" in 1973.

"With his immense arrangements, Jean-Claude was at the origin of my +starization+. Again with him, this last album celebrates love in all directions. All the time, I sang the love which, with sincerity, I believe, have been the watchwords of my career. If you are not sincere, the public will leave you...", observes Serge Lama.

Over the twelve tracks of this "ultimate album" - the 24th of his career - the singer, alternately serious and playful, evokes both on a duet the love which unites him to his wife Luana, as well as his admiration. unexpected for the tennis player Roger Federer or for the writer Albert Camus: "Oh Camus, I mourn you / My hero you remain / You who died of a Dostoyevsky in the heart".

"Federer fascinates me!"

"Federer fascinates me! He is an incredible player, without the impression of effort ... An admiration that is love at this point!", He admits about the Swiss who has just retired.

"I arrived late to my concerts because I watched his matches in my dressing room!".

Singer Serge Lama poses in Paris on September 21, 2022 Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT AFP

Retirement time necessarily inspires him with a poignant title: "I'm a brave little old man / In a suburban hole / My life is not a party / And yet I'm stubborn" .

With the title "Handsome Mec", he quips: "You're like a brand new penny / At the bluffing lottery / You're like a commodity / Who thinks it's going to last".

Claiming the title of singer who performed the most concerts until he was 75 "sometimes with 300 concerts a year", Serge Lama said he had given everything for this latest album: "I put all my heart into it and all my soul...".

An inspired lyricist and renowned composer, Serge Lama wrote his first texts before adolescence.

Noticed by a singing teacher, he performed his first compositions in November 1963, opening the doors to Mireille's Petit Conservatoire, a big TV springboard at the time.

In February 1964, at the age of 21, he gave his first recital at L'Ecluse, a famous Parisian cabaret of the time, opening for Barbara.

If he definitively gives up the stage, Serge Lama could accept a special program: "on television, there are possible arrangements with the devil. If a singer asks me to write songs for him, it will be gladly".

"Comedy why not too, but for a character sitting at the limit", he laughs.

"I have no illusions: nothing will be remembered from me," he adds.

"We will not write theses on Serge Lama... From up there, I would be surprised to see that!".

© 2022 AFP