Canadian race car driver (CART, NASCAR, F1) and multiple world championship winner Jacques Joseph Charles Villeneuve, recently debuted as a singer-songwriter. He released an acoustic-pop-rock album called “Private Paradise”, featuring himself singing and playing the guitar.

The single “Accepterais-tu ?”, in which he asks his loved one to marry him, written in Canadian French, is one of 4 songs in French, the other 9 tracks are in English. Villeneuve co-wrote one song with his sister Melanie, a song about their dad, Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve, who died in a 140 mph crash in the final lap of the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix, when Jacques was eleven years old.

Jacques Villeneuve bought his first guitar and started writing songs in 1996, at the beginning of his Formula One career. During the late 1990s Villeneuve was engaged to Australian singer Dannii Minogue who stimulated his desire to express himself through music.

I am stupidly passionate about music, it has become a bit of a drug. I buy tons of CD’s. It makes my wife crazy, but you know it’s cheaper than buying watches or stuff like that!

About music as a career :
“Right now when I think career I still think racing. Music has to be fun, it has to remain fun. A career brings a lot of obligations and a lot of stuff that you don’t actually want to do. You kind of have to be slightly politically correct, you have to bend over backwards to please people here and there, and other stuff that you don’t want to do. So the plan is to keep music as a professional hobby.”

About performing live :
“I didn’t get into music for the live performances. I really like writing and then working in the studio and seeing how a song can come to life, and performing comes with the music. I’m not a singer and I don’t have the training, so it just has to remain fun, like a jam session. I don’t really get nervous when I get on stage because not being a singer allows me to make mistakes!”

This is a clip of Jacques Villeneuve singing and talking about his music.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 8:44 am and is filed under musical sportsmen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.