Yannick Noah

It’s safe to say that Yannick Noah has it all. His incredibly successful music career is enviable enough, (millions of records sold, sell out stadium concerts in his native France) but when one takes into account how he only started it when he was 31 as up until that point he was too busy being a legitimate, honest to goodness world number one tennis player (as a doubles player but it still counts)… It would be very easy to hate him if he weren’t so very good at both of those vocations. Which almost makes him even more hateable for being so annoyingly talented, but it only takes one look at his live show to know that he’s as real as it gets. The man’s charisma is infectious, one look at him onstage and you can tell that this is a man who is more than able to hold a stadium full of people in the palm of his hand like it was second nature to him. Combine that with some considerably natty pop songs filled with influences as far flung as reggae, funk, rock and Andean folk music and you’ve got a man who’s more than worthy of his place at the top of both the Tennis and the Music worlds. It would take one hell of an artist to earn that, but Yannick Noah has. Highly recommended.