Richard Anthony, born Ricardo Anthony Btesh (13 January 1938 – 19 April 2015), was a French pop singer, born in Egypt, who had his greatest success in the 1960s and 1970s.^[2]

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (March 2014) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Richard Anthony]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Richard Anthony}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Background information, Birth name ...

Richard Anthony
Richard Anthony in 2006
Background information
Birth name	Ricardo Anthony Btesh
Born	(1938-01-13)13 January 1938 Cairo, Egypt
Died	19 April 2015(2015-04-19) (aged 77) Pégomas, France
Genres	French pop rock and roll[1]
Occupation(s)	Singer, songwriter
Years active	1958–1990s
Website	richard-anthony.fr.gd

Close

He was born in Cairo, Egypt, to a Syrian Jewish family of prominent industrialists and diplomats.^[3][2] As a child he lived in Egypt and Argentina, as well as studying at Brighton College in England. From 1951, he studied at Lycée Janson-de-Sailly and settled in Paris. He started studying law, but after his father's sudden death in 1956 became a door-to-door salesman to help support his family. He also began playing saxophone in Paris nightclubs.^[4]

In 1958, as Richard Anthony, he made his first recordings as a singer, initially recording French language versions of American pop hits. These included "Tu m'étais destinée" ("You Are My Destiny"), "Peggy Sue", and "Nouvelle vague" ("Three Cool Cats") which became successful in France. In the early 1960s he became one of the biggest French pop stars, with other hits including "Let's Twist Again", "C’est ma fête" ("It's My Party"), and "Et j'entends siffler le train" ("500 Miles").^[4][5] He started recording at the Abbey Road Studios in England, and reached the British charts with the English-language songs "Walking Alone" (#37, 1963) and "If I Loved You" (#18, 1964).^[6] One of his songs, "I Don't Know What To Do", arranged by Ivor Raymonde, was released in the US in 1965 by Motown Records on the V.I.P. label, making Anthony the first European artist to appear for that company.^[4]

He recorded the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" as "Fille sauvage" in 1966, and his song "Aranjuez mon amour", based on Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, became one of his biggest international hits in 1967. He remained popular in France, having one of his biggest hits in 1974 with "Amoureux de ma femme", which was a cover version of an Italian song originally by Caterina Caselli.^[4][5] Most of his recordings are cover versions in French. In the late 1970s, he remarried and moved to Los Angeles for several years. After returning to France in 1982, he continued to record, perform, and appear on TV shows, and in 1998 published an autobiography, Il faut croire aux étoiles.^[4] Over his career, his total record sales were estimated to be at least 60 million.^[5] He died in 2015, aged 77.^[5]

• List of French singers
• French popular music
• Music of France