France’s far-right Front National FN is planning to sue Madonna over a video that shows party leader and former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead.
The extreme right have no problem with free speech when they want to spout hate, now do they? Good job, Madonna.
Read the rest at RFI.
A couple years after his album Préliminaires, featuring some French classics (which we covered here), Iggy Pop is about to release Après, a collection of classic torch songs, ballads and French variété. We just love the way he wraps his destroyed voice around those French songs. Seems somehow appropriate.
Read the complete song selection and more at Rock Cellar Magazine. You can buy the albums at our Amazon store! Après / Préliminaires
If your Valentine happens to be both a Francophile and a cineaste, I think s/he might be quite pleased with Universal-France’s three-disc compilation, Nouvelle Vague: Chansons et Musiques de Films. The set includes selections from soundtracks composed by Michel Legrand, Georges Delerue, Miles Davis, Maurice Jarre, Serge Gainsbourg, Bernard Herrmann, and on and on, for films by such directors as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, Phillippe De Broca, Jacques Demy, and on and on.
Read more at Cinespect and buy Nouvelle Vague: Chansons et Musiques de Films at the Francophilia Amazon Store!
We could wander these virtual stacks for days! So far, the Bibliothèque nationale de France has digitized more than one million works, including books, maps, manuscripts, images, periodicals, scores and sound recordings, and made them available for free to the public at the Gallica digital library. This is France’s answer to Google Books, and the result of the big fight from a couple of years ago.
Guess all those Lipton commercials convinced someone he was the right man for the job…
Read the rest at Javert Update.
Diddy is a self-proclaimed Francophile: with an album titled “Last Train to Paris” and premium vodka Ciroc attached to his famous name, you’d think he’d be riding around in a striped shirt, by now, baguette in tow. But it’s precisely this French fascination that recently got the hip-hop mogul and his crew into trouble with customs at Nice’s Cote d’Azur airport last week.
Read the rest at The Boombox.
We are blown away by this guy. You can buy his CDs and the DVD of this program at the Francophilia Amazon store.
The work of Serge Gainsbourg, the large-nosed, Gitanes-smoking French icon whose jazzy, bohemian songs exemplified a sexually liberated France of the 1960s and 1970s, is enjoying a resurgence in the most unlikely of places — perfume ads.
Read the rest at Reuters.
Son of Jacques Higelin, an icon of French variété, Arthur H is one of our absolute favorite French singers. This is a fan video mashup using Chanson de Satie, which Arthur H recorded with Feist.
You can get some of his albums, including our favorite, adieu tristesse, on which the song in the video appears, at the Francophilia Amazon store.
…[T]he epic mess of Piaf’s love life, as well as the scale of her talent, make this story something special, while her brutal Dickensian childhood virtually ensured that she would spend her adult life in a doomed quest for perfect love and security.
Complete review at The Barnes & Noble Review. Buy the book at the Francophilia Amazon store.
We cannot express with mere words our adoration of Luce, whom we wrote about when she won La Nouvelle Star in 2010. She’s a character and a half, with the voice of a goddess, and her first album will be out on May 23. Till then, on her official site, a short comic video with a tiny taste of each of the songs is being posted every Thursday. Not to miss, vraiment.
We promised more révélations according to the Victoires de la musique shortlist. Meet Guillaume Grand, singing Toi et moi from his new album of the same name. You can buy Toi et moi at the Francophilia Amazon Store!
If you’re a fan of Serge Gainsbourg, who is arguably one of the best French songwriters of the 20th century, you won’t want to miss the soon-to-be-released 20th anniversary collection.
Pre-order on the official Serge Gainsbourg site.
Every year the Victoires de la Musique (French equivalent of the Grammy Awards) identifies the révélations of the preceding year; new artists with star quality. We’ve already introduced you to Zaz and Camélia Jordana, both of whom appear on this year’s short list. FéFé, another coup de coeur of ours, gives you sophisticated urban rap with an African flavor, or blues, or reggae… You can’t pigeonhole him. Here’s his official site if you want to hear more.
We are just madly in love with Zaz. Heard her on the radio the other day. Gypsy jazz meets Piaf by way of pop… Here’s an acoustic version of Les Passants. You can buy her eponymous album at the Francophilia Amazon Store.
