Le chanteur is the third album by French singer Daniel Balavoine, released in June 1978 under Riviera-LM, a subsidiary of Barclay.

[3] However, after several weeks, Missir visited the studio to listen to what had been produced, but found that a sufficiently strong enough song to mark the album was missing.

Subsequently, one time whilst the rest of the musicians were at a restaurant next door to the studio, Balavoine stayed behind and wrote the lyrics to "Le chanteur" in an hour.

For the release of the album's first single, Barclay's sales team produced a promotional single with "Le chanteur" as the B-side and "Si je suis fou" as the A-side with the record company seeing "Si je suis fou" as being the more potentially successful.

However, when the radio stations played "Le chanteur", the record company were surprised and were forced to place it as the A-side for the commercial release of the single.