Mitsou’s exciting, dance-forward pop music and risqué artistic moves made her French Canada’s most direct equivalent to Madonna in the late ‘80s. Born in Quebec in 1970, she was a child actor in a soap opera and eventually moved on to music, releasing her funky debut single, “Bye bye mon cowboy,” in 1988. The track managed a spectacular feat by infiltrating English radio across Canada and becoming a crossover hit. Throughout the ‘90s and early 2000s, Mitsou stuck to the bright, rhythmic pop that brought her early success. She also made an impact with bold career decisions: The video for 1991’s pumping “Dis-moi, dis-moi”—packed with nude bodies—was banned from regular MuchMusic rotation. She traded mainly in house bangers (1993’s RuPaul-penned “Everybody Say Love”) and groovy pop (1994’s “Le Yaya”) before largely leaving music behind in the early 2000s for numerous other media pursuits.