Frédéric François (born Francesco Barracato; 3 June 1950 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy), is a French-speaking singer-composer living in Belgium.

Born on 3 June 1950 in Lercara Friddi in Sicily, in a very modest Italian family, he is the second child of Antonina (Nina) Salemi and Giuseppe (Peppino) Barracato.

Young Francesco was only 10 when he sang O Sole Mio for the first time in public in a café frequented mostly by Sicilians in Tilleur, "Le Passage à Niveau" [The Level Crossing].

Distributed on the AZ label, this song crossed the Franco-Belgian border, thanks to Lucien Morisse, the programming director of Europe 1, who played it on his channel and enabled the young singer to have a number one single on the hit parade for the first time, though it was not enough to make him famous.

He subsequently released two singles "Le pays d'où tu viens" [The Country you come from] and "Shabala": the first was broadcast on the Formule J programme of the Belgian radio corporation, the RTB.

The real hit was to come in the summer of that year: “Je voudrais dormir près de toi” [I would like to sleep near you], which sold 500,000 copies and went to number one in several countries.

Frédéric François is classified among the "romantic crooners for young girls",[Note 7] (like Patrick Juvet, Christian Delagrange, Dave, Mike Brant).

This low ebb took its toll with psychosomatic effects: he suffered serious attacks of spasmophilia which would become less frequent only when he started having hits again, thanks to free radios, which had just made their appearance, and played the title “Adios Amor” [Goodbye love] at every turn – an adaptation by the lyricist Michel Jourdan of a Germany song by Andy Borg.

The creation of the Top 50 that same year would prove a decisive turning point in his career, since for the first time in recording history, singers were ranked according to their actual sales and not on subjective criteria.

And the craze for his new song "Je t'aime à l'italienne" [I love you, Italian style] was such that his name would be in lights once again the following year (1985) on the great music hall on the right bank, while his first book Les yeux charbon [Coal Eyes] (Carrère-Lafon) was a homage to his family and his public.

The success of his new album "Une nuit ne suffit pas" [One night is not enough] (first joint effort with a female lyricist, Michaele) and the preparation of his third Olympia show in 1988, helped him to overcome this shock.

The first evening, as he went off stage, he was told that his fourth child, Victoria, had been born while he was performing the last song of his show, "Je t'aime à l'italienne."

In 1993, he left Trema to create his own production company, MBM, in order to gain complete creative freedom, and signed a contract with BMG for the distribution.

He decided to pay homage to Tino Rossi by covering his biggest hits in 2003: Méditerranée, Marinella, Ave Maria, Petit Papa Noël.

In 2004, during his eleventh appearance at the Olympia, he sang in English for the first time in his career, Elvis Presley's song, "Love Me Tender", to a standing ovation.

That is why the album released on 14 June 2006, entitled "Mes Préférences" is emblematic, because it marks out the highlights of his career and family life: a song sung for the first time in public at the age of ten (“O Sole Mio”); his first recording (Petite fille); his first big hit (“Laisse-moi vivre ma vie”); the song written in honour of his mother while she was alive “Mamina” (“My little mamma” in Sicilian); the tender declaration for his latest little child, Victoria "Fou d'elle" [Mad about her]; the title which he composed for the sixth anniversary of his father's death, "Le Strapontin de papa" [Dad's folding chair].

Whilst on his hospital bed, the live album then the DVD version of the Frédéric François tour from the Olympia to Forest National were released, which mixed recordings of his performances on stage in Paris and in Brussels.

He participated in his first radio show in France in 1972 on Europe N°1, in "5, 6, 7" presented by Jacques Ourévitch, at the time that "Je voudrais dormir près de toi" came out.

In 1973, the presenter Christian Morin on Europe N°1 was the first to use the diminutive "Frédo" to refer to him, during a programme called "Le hit parade" where he was invited to reward the millionth buyer of his single "Laisse-moi vivre ma vie."

In the beginning of 1975, in the programme entitled "Samedi est à vous" [Saturday over to you] presented by Bernard Golay on the first station of the ORTF, he was tied, with Mike Brant, for first place, as the favourite singer of television viewers.

In France, during a broadcast of Jean-Pierre Foucault's "Sacrée Soirée" [Hell of an evening] in 1988, his son Anthony surprised him by singing Chicago, accompanied by his sister Gloria (on guitar) and his brother Vincent (on piano).

His wife, Monique, has sung only once in public, during a "Sacrée Soirée" show for Valentine's Day, on 14 February 1991, when she joined him in a rendition of "Mon cœur te dit je t'aime.” On 12 April 1991, "Tous à la Une" [All in the headlines] asked him to be its exceptional editor in chief on TF1.

Frédéric Mitterrand devoted his "C'est notre vie" [It's our life] show on 17 June 1994, during which he met the actress who made him dream in his youth, Gina Lollobrigida.

He improvised "Le Chaland" [The Barge] on the guitar, in Italian, because he knew it was one of her favourite songs, which served as a leitmotiv for several cult films in Italy.

On 25 April 2009, he sponsored a new programme on the Belgian station RTL-TVI entitled "Au cœur de Télévie" [At the heart of Telelife] to get people to understand the scourge that is cancer through reports and interviews.

None of the three singers stuck to the initial programme (they were to pay homage to Polnareff, Brassens and Luis Mariano respectively), and together, they created a "Sicilian" ambiance on stage, bringing their childhood memories musically back to life.

In 2011, during a special "Vivement Dimanche" [Ever on Sunday] show devoted to Italy, Michel Drucker invited Frédéric François, who joined Ornella Muti, Arturo Brachetti and "Les Prêtres" [The Priests] on stage.

He asked Frédéric François to be the first "subject" of his show, and took him back to Tilleur, the neighbourhood of his youth, in the house where his parents used to live when his first producer, Constant Defourny, came knocking on their door.

In the beginning of 2014, Frédéric was invited to Sophie Davant's "C'est au programme," during the course of which the writer Marc Lévy paid him a stirring tribute, as if he had written the exceptional destiny of little Francesco Barracato.

Frédéric was very moved, to the point of wishing to include this video in his new tour, in a segment entitled "Hommage à mon père" [Homage to my father].