Jacques Villeneuve only earned $5000 from his music career; how former F1 champion had dreadful spell with music

When Jacques Villeneuve switched his interest from Formula 1 to music and gave the world Private Paradise’ it did not sell well.

1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve had a music career as well along with driving on the race track. However, the less said the better as the album sales were a blockbuster flop.

Jacques Villeneuve is the son of legendary Canadian driver Gilles Villeneuve. He began his Formula One journey with Williams and won the 1997 World championship ahead of Michael Schumacher.

He joined BAR-Honda and had taken part in teams like Sauber and Renault during the end of his time in F1. Moreover, in 2007 a lot of things happened.

1997 World Champion’s Private Paradise

Jacques Villeneuve explored NASCAR after failing to get a team in F1. However, before that, he decided to give a new career a try. That new interest was music.

In February of 2007, the former world champion released his musical album called ‘Private Paradise’. The album contains 13 songs out of which nine are french and four are English.

The album debuted at number 49 on the Quebec pop charts. However, the sales figures suggested another story. It sold 233 copies in Quebec and 836 in North America.

Seventeen years ago today, Jacques Villeneuve released “Private Paradise” which for me, was his best album. pic.twitter.com/G3lihTJIRc

— Conor McKenna 🇺🇦 (@mckennaconor) February 19, 2015

According to discogs.com, the median cost of Villeneuve’s album was only $5. Therefore, he hardly earned more than five grand. Definitely not so wise investment in his post-F1 days

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Jacques Villeneuve defends the poor album sales

According to the Canadian driver, the bad publicity by the journalist was one of the reasons for the album’s failure. The private paradise has some really good acoustic guitar riffs worth giving a try.

Moreover, talking about the sales figure, Villeneuve stated: “They’re not great (but) it’s actually not that bad. Position 20 on the chart was about 50 CDs more. So it was taken out of context and people thought, ‘Oh wow, that’s really a piece of sh-t.'”

The album deserves a view from a different angle after all these years.  One of the songs called ‘Father’, is about Gilles Villeneuve and is a touching tribute to his father.

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