Maurane

Claudine Luypaerts, better known as Maurane (12 November 1960 – 7 May 2018), was a Francophone Belgian singer and actress.

Brought to light in the 1980s with her role as Marie-Jeanne in the second version of the rock opera Starmania, her best-known titles are "Toutes les mamas", "Sur un prélude de Bach" and "Tu es mon autre" (in a duet with Lara Fabian). She was regularly referred to as a "golden voice of francophone song," or having a "velvet voice."

Claudine Luypaerts was born on 12 November 1960 in Ixelles, Brussels, to Guy-Philippe Luypaerts, a composer and director of Académie de Musique of Verviers, and Jeannie Patureaux, a piano teacher. When she was young, she studied the violin for a while, but was put off by all forms of schooling and began to learn to sing and play the piano on her own, before preferring the guitar.

In 1976, she was second in the Visa competition for the show and, the following year, took part in the Lundis d'Hortense, for which she adopted the stage name "Claudie Claude".

In 1979, Maurane took part in the show Brel en mille temps, with Philippe Lafontaine, where she was discovered by the French songwriter Pierre Barouh. Founder of the Saravah label, he produced her first singles which were released starting in 1980 under the pseudonym "Claude Maurane". The latter is a reference to the director Francis Morane who worked on Starmania. However, it is spelled slightly differently in order to avoid confusion with the Bob Morane comic strip, even though she is sometimes credited under this spelling.

The first singles - "J'me roule en boule" (1980), "Fais soleil" (1982), "T'as pas la pêche" (1984), "Moi l'argent, toi jeune" (1985) - did not meet with much success. She later got a string of small contracts, singing in the street or in cafés and to be a backing singer, notably for Viktor Lazlo, Jo Lemaire or Philippe Lafontaine.