Michel Pagliaro, also known as "Pag", is a a singer-songwriter and guitarist from Canada, who has been an influential figure in the Canadian music scene for over five decades. Born on November 9, 1948, in Montreal, Quebec, he started his career when he was just a teenager, playing in local bands around Montreal. In 1966, he began playing guitar with the band Les Chanceliers, which rose to prominence with the single "Le P'tit Poppy," a French adaptation of Linden Oldham and Dan Pennington's "I'm Your Puppet." Two years later, he quit the group and landed his first couple of hits as a solo artist with the songs "Comme d'habitude" and "Ton nom imprimé dans le cœur," both included in his 1968 eponymous studio debut. Over the next few years, Michel Pagliaro became one of the most popular rock singers in Canada, scoring numerous Top 40 hits on both the Francophone and Anglophone charts thanks to memorable songs such as "J'ai marché pour une nation" (1970), "J'entends frapper" (1972), and "Fou de toi" (1973) as well as "Give Us a Chance" (1972), "Rainshowers" (1972), and "Louise" (1975). Released in 1981, the album Bamboo found the Quebecois legend adopting a New Wave-oriented sound on songs like "Travailler," "Romantique," and "Quand on fait l'amour." Even though he retreated from the spotlight shortly after releasing Sous peine d'amour in 1988, Michel Pagliaro revisited his catalog on the compilations Hit Parade (1995), Goodbye Rain (1997), Singles 1969-89 (2011), Greatest Hits (2015), and Grands Succès (2020). Throughout his career, Pagliaro has won several awards and honors, including the National Achievement Award at the annual Francophone SOCAN Awards in 2002 and the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic in 2008. In 2010, "J'entends frapper" was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
