Lara Fabian Canadian Singer With 846K YouTube Subscribers

Early life

Lara Fabian was born Lara Sophie Katy Crokaert on 9 January 1970 in Etterbeek, in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. She is the only child of a Flemish musician and a mother from Sicily, and she grew up between Catania in Sicily and the Belgian town of Ruisbroek. Italian was her first language. When she was eight her parents enrolled her at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where she studied for ten years. She moved to Quebec in 1990, and later held Canadian citizenship alongside her Belgian nationality.

Career

During the 1980s Fabian entered a number of European competitions and won several prizes. She released her first single in 1986, and in 1988 she represented Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin with the song "Croire", finishing fourth. In 1990 she and her collaborator Rick Allison moved to Montreal, where they founded their own label and publishing company, Productions Clandestines. Her self-titled French-language debut album came out in August 1991 and sold more than 100,000 copies in Canada.

Her 1994 album Carpe diem became her breakthrough, going gold within three weeks and producing the hits "Tu t'en vas", "Si tu m'aimes" and "Leïla". In 1996 she supplied the French-Canadian voice of Esmeralda in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. After signing with Polydor in France, she released Pure in June 1997, which sold more than two million copies there and included the song "La Différence", which speaks against homophobia. Her first live album, Live, debuted at number one in France in March 1999, and a contract with Sony Music followed.

That summer she recorded her first English-language album, also titled Lara Fabian, with producers including Walter Afanasieff, Glen Ballard and Patrick Leonard. Its single "I Will Love Again" reached number one on the Billboard dance club chart and number 32 on the Hot 100, and "Love By Grace" became the theme of a Brazilian television drama. She also recorded songs for the soundtracks of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Her fourth French album, Nue, was released in 2001 and reached number one in Belgium and number two in France. In 2001 she recorded versions of the Canadian national anthem with David Foster and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Later projects included the English-language album A Wonderful Life (2004), the French album 9 (2005), and its live follow-up Un regard 9 Live (2006). Toutes les femmes en moi appeared in 2009 and was later issued in English as Every Woman in Me. In 2010 she released Mademoiselle Zhivago, a concept album made with the composer Igor Krutoy and issued first in Ukraine and Russia. Le Secret followed in April 2013, and in August 2014 she released a duet with the Turkish singer Mustafa Ceceli, "Make Me Yours Tonight". In February 2015 she competed at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy as one of the artists in the main category. Ma vie dans la tienne was released in November 2015, certified platinum in France, and the English-language album Camouflage in 2017, which led to a world tour in 2018. Papillon followed on 8 February 2019 and Lockdown Sessions in December 2020. In 2021 she took a role on the programme Star Académie on TVA, in 2022 she appeared in the film Arlette, and on 29 November 2024 she released the French album Je suis là. Her two listed screen credits are Mademoiselle Zhivago (2013) and Arlette (2022).

Fabian has also written for others, including the French singers Chimène Badi, Nolwenn Leroy and Myriam Abel, and the English lyrics for a song by Igor Krutoy performed by Dimash Qudaibergen. She sings in many languages beyond her main ones, among them Greek, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian and Turkish. The records list 22 albums and nine singles from 1991 to 2024, in pop and pop rock, and also note piano as her instrument.

Recognition

In February 1998 Fabian received the Discovery of the Year prize at the Victoires de la Musique. She is also a Commander of the Walloon Merit. At the Félix Awards in 1995 she won both Show of the Year and Female Singer of the Year, and in 1999 she was honoured at the World Music Awards in Monaco as the best-selling Benelux artist. The records list two wins. Her notable works include Carpe diem, Pure, Nue and Mademoiselle Zhivago.

Personal life

Fabian married the Italian magician Gabriel Di Giorgio in June 2013, and she has one child. She returned to Montreal in 2017 to live near her family. As of February 2025 her YouTube channel had about 846,000 subscribers.