Kendji Girac

After leaving school at age 16, French singer and guitarist Kendji Girac worked alongside his father as a tree surgeon until a video of him performing rapper Maître Gims’ “Bella” went viral. ∙ Overcoming long odds, Girac won the third season of the French reality competition The Voice: La Plus Belle Voix, taking an impressive 51% of the public vote in the final round. ∙ His debut album, Kendji—arriving just a few months after his victory on The Voice—went to No. 1 in France and Belgium in 2014. ∙ Girac won two NRJ Awards in 2014, one for Francophone Breakthrough of the Year and the other for his debut single, “Color Gitano,” which was named Francophone Song of the Year. ∙ Pop star Ariana Grande invited Girac to join her on “Attends-moi,” a French-language version of her 2015 single “One Last Time.” ∙ His second and third albums, Ensemble (2015) and Amigo (2018), both topped the French charts and spawned multiple Top 10 singles. ∙ In 2020, he returned to the world of The Voice, this time as a judge on series offshoot The Voice Kids.