Do we like them?

Do we like Charles Aznavour?

Our score: 9 out of 10. Decades of speaking up for people who were marginalised, and no harmful words or acts turned up; the only gap is how thin the record I could open was.

Aznavour was the French-Armenian singer who became a household name across the world. He was proud of his roots, and in 2017 he talked openly about the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire and the Holocaust as shared history. That sense of belonging to a people who had been through it shaped a lot of what he did.

The standout story for this page is his 1972 song “Comme ils disent”, about a gay man who works in drag. In a 2012 interview he said “I was the first to write a song in France about homosexuality.” He explained that he saw his gay friends were marginalised and wanted to write about their specific problems. Mind you, the 'first in France' bit is his own claim, so take it as his.

On the harm test, I found nothing. No slide into conspiracy theories, no campaigning against anyone's rights, and no dodgy company. The one thing on the record points the other way, with a song that treated gay people with sympathy in an era when plenty of pop didn't.

On the good-person side, the big one is the war. In 2017 Israel's president presented him with the Raoul Wallenberg Award, and the president's office said his family hid a number of people persecuted by the Nazis. That's real risk, taken when it cost something.

In 2009 he took on an unusual second job as Armenia's ambassador to Switzerland, after getting Armenian nationality the year before. He told Armenian television he thought that what is important for Armenia must be important for all of us. It's a ceremonial gig for a singer, but it shows where his loyalties sat.

Nothing new on him lately, and I didn't find any court cases or credible misconduct allegations in what I could open. The record I could read in full is limited, so treat this as a strong lean yes rather than a deep dive.