J’taime Paris

Before I ever visited Paris, I loved the sound of French pop music, which I used to listen to when I shopped at Rizzoli’s on Fifth Avenue (this was in the early 1980s). Rizzoli’s didn’t sell music back then, so I would have to go downtown to Tower Records on Broadway (how much do we all miss old New York City?) to buy albums.

I loved that Rizzoli was playing music that, if it were in English, I probably wouldn’t listen to (like Claude François’ version of If I Had a Hammer which I have had on repeat all day, but I can’t post it–go watch! Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nrcb3oGkc).

This song by France Gall is about Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elton John loved it so much, he recorded an album with France. Il record n’est pas bien.

This kind of music was called yé-yé which is the French-accented way of say “yeah yeah” and while most American kids were listening to New Wave, I was listening to rockabilly, country music, and yé-yé, which had been around for about 20 years, so a lot of the songs I discovered then were actually from the 1960s, like this one, in which Sylvie Vartan covers The Cascades.

Yé -yé was revolutionary because France’s singers were previously very dramatic and, you know, depressing (Edith Piaf, pour example). The yé–yé girls were lovely and fun, and not at all chanteauses.

Sylvie Vartan actually married Johnny Hallyday and so I feel compelled to post a song by “The French Elvis” who I saw once in New York.

Here are Johnny and Sylvie singing Edith! So good.

Turns out there’s a new documentary (five episodes) about Johnny on Netflix now! So you know what I’ll be doing all day.

Nous partons pour Paris dans une semaine! (We leave for Paris in one week!)