For the first time, she is speaking out about her Olympic experience. Singer Aya Nakamura spoke this Sunday, August 25, about her performance at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, during a live broadcast on TikTok in which she answered questions from her fans.
After heated controversy over her participation, she performed on July 26 on the Pont des Arts, where she performed her hits “Pookie” and “Djadja”, as well as the Charles Aznavour classic “For me, formidable” alongside the Republican Guard.
“I had no idea how important the event was.”
Regarding her participation, she admits that she did not anticipate the impact that such a performance could have: “The hardest part was when there was controversy. I did not expect it at all, I was shocked. When it was offered to me, I did not know what it represented. I asked myself a lot of questions because I saw a lot of artists asking for this place. (…) Fortunately I did not come across everything because frankly I could have insulted mothers”, admitted the 29-year-old artist.
“I didn’t know at all how much weight the event had. I didn’t imagine it was that big. When it was offered to me, I said to myself: I’m going to do it, I’m going to go, I’m going to sing. It’s going to be a show, I just have to be well-dressed, do the show and I’ll go home,” she anticipated. Faced with the wave of criticism she received, she expressed her opinion with great hindsight: “I think that as an artist, a black woman, I took on everyone. There is the caricature of the black woman that some saw in me.”
“I think I took for everyone”
Even though she gradually realized the importance of such an event, Aya Nakamura claims not to have been too stressed for this performance: “I am someone who internalizes a lot, I work a lot on myself too, when I stress, I manage to channel it. We had fun crazy with the Republican Guard. I did not realize that the impact of the Republican Guard x Aya Nakamurait was banger (great).” “It was so good, I’m so proud of myself, I’m happy,” she finally told her followers.
However, “For me, formidable” by Aya Nakamura, it’s not for right away on streaming platforms, according to the singer. “A lot of people were surprised and asked me when I was releasing the song (in full). But Charles Aznavour is technical!” she said.
She explains that she had a lot of difficulty in the studio during the recording because Aznavour’s interpretation “has nothing to do with the way of singing today”. Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the Paris 2024 ceremonies, was particularly supportive at this time.
It was never a question of singing Edith Piaf
Aya Nakamura also wanted to re-establish the truth about the artistic choices of her performance. Rumours a few months before the Games indicated that she would cover an Edith Piaf song during the ceremony, at the suggestion of Emmanuel Macron.
“He didn’t impose Edith Piaf on me. We talked about it, he asked me if I liked Edith Piaf, I said yes. Two weeks later, all the media knew that I was going to do the Games and said that Macron imposed Edith Piaf“That’s not true. He didn’t impose anything on me at all, we discussed, the choices were already made and there was no question of Edith Piaf at all,” the French star insisted on correcting.
Aya Nakamura then revealed that it was normally during “Vogue World”, the event that launched Paris Fashion Week in June, that she should have performed a song from “La Môme”. But faced with the controversy that broke out in the spring, she preferred to give up and fell back on “Fly”, one of her original songs.