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Here's an all-France Gall mix, featuring some of my favourite songs of hers from 1963 to 1972. I say some of because, well, I love pretty much all her stuff from that era - it took some restraint to only choose 38 songs! You'll find some of her absolute classics here, as well as some lesser-known songs that are equally wonderful. After making the mix, I realised I drew a lot from my favourite album of hers, the 1967 psych-pop classic, 1968. I also seem to have included every song where she does her adorable version of scatting, which is really just the best thing ever. As well as her French songs, I've included a few of her German tracks, the Japanese version of 'Un prince charmant' and the Italian version of 'La Quatrième Chose'.

I've already gone into what I love about France Gall's music, so I'm not going to get descriptive here, but just let the music speak for itself. My hope is these selections would make someone new to her music fall in love with it as much as I did. And perhaps there are a few things here that are not so readily familiar to established French pop fans. 

Eurovision has wrapped up for another year, but thanks to the magic of the internet, pretty much every performance lives on forever – for better or worse. Amid the endless amounts of cheese and sap, there are some truly worthwhile gems to be found. You can check out my Eurovision tag for a few of my vintage picks that generally don't make it onto lists of nostalgic favourites.

Today I want to revisit one such entry: 'Boum badaboum', performed by Minouche Barelli, a French singer who represented Monaco in 1967. Written by Serge Gainsbourg, it's a rather bizarre number for the contest, one that certainly stands out among the typical mawkish ballads and emptily jaunty tunes. In a bold, shouty vocal style, backed by a booming rhythm and disorienting strings, Barelli brazenly sings of her desire to experience all life has to offer in the face of an expected nuclear apocalypse. It's perhaps one of the first genuinely weird entries in a contest that now doesn't feel complete without at least one a year.

'Boum badaboum' was the second of Gainsbourg's three contributions to Eurovision. In 1965, France Gall took home first prize for Luxembourg with Gainsbourg's 'Poupée de cire, poupée de son'. The song was innovative for the contest, with its uptempo rhythm and lyrics rich with layered meaning. Gainsbourg pulled off a seemingly impossible feat with this entry: he impressed Eurovision judges accustomed to more conservative, sentimental fare; he didn't compromise his literate, chanson-inspired lyricism1; he deftly satirised teen pop; and he created a successful modern pop song that appealed to and expanded Gall's young fanbase. The song poetically reflects on the artifice of a pop idol, and the gulf between the realms a performer like Gall inhabited, that of the worldy, confident figure in her songs and the limited, sheltered reality of her lived experiences. While the song "unobtrusively plays on words to deconstruct the yéyé industry"2, there's an empathy alongside Gainsbourg's wryness that gives it poignancy. Gall's later recollections of her life as a pop star during this era suggest she found Gainsbourg's lyrics painfully apt.

Though a less sophisticated effort, it seems with 'Boum Badaboum', Gainsbourg was continuing to attempt to push the boundaries of what was acceptable to Eurovision audiences and judges. Nineteen-year-old Barelli sings of wanting to experience life before the world ends in a nuclear explosion. She pleads for a little more time to have the chance to fall in love, and, it's heavily implied, experience sexual pleasure:

'Noël à Vaugirard' was a short film that appeared in an episode of Dim Dam Dom, broadcast on December 23, 1966. Starring Serge Gainsbourg as Joseph and Chantal Goya as Marie (Mary), it's a comedic telling of the Nativity story updated for its young, modern audience, filmed at the abbatoirs of Vaugirard.

It's been exactly 50 years since this odd Christmas sketch first aired on French TV, so I thought it might be a good time to revisit it, this time in more detail than when I first posted it ten years ago. I have also realised the version I originally shared is abridged, so wanted to post the full version, which is four-and-a-half minutes longer. 'Noël à Vaugirard' was a short film that appeared in an episode of Dim Dam Dom, broadcast on December 23, 1966. Starring Serge Gainsbourg as Joseph and Chantal Goya as Marie (Mary), it's a comedic telling of the Nativity story updated for its young, modern audience, filmed at the abbatoirs of Vaugirard. It's a light, throwaway kind of piece, but irreverent in its own way, with some surreal and highly creative moments that reflect the unique approach of the program.

Premiering in March 1965, Dim Dam Dom was the flagship show of the newly launched second television channel of France's national broadcasting service, ORTF. It aired once a month on Sunday afternoon, for a total of 70 episodes until the end of its run in 1971. Daisy de Galard, who had worked at Elle magazine for fourteen years, was approached by Roger Stéphane, a journalist and an advisor to the head of ORTF, Claude Contamine, to create a television magazine aimed at women. Though she had no experience in television, the fledgling producer set out to make something different to the usual fare offered to female audiences at the time. She created a show that was modern and innovative, taking many risks both aesthetically and in terms of subjects the show covered. The program not only showcased some of the most popular entertainers of the time, but was a springboard for many young journalists and directors. The name Dim Dam Dom was an abbreviation for Dimanche (because it was broadcast on Sundays), Dames (since it was primarily targeted at women), D'hommes (because it also featured segments concerning men, and aimed to hold their interest as well). A hit from its first broadcast, and successful later in reruns, Dim Dam Dom is remembered with a great deal of respect as a pioneering program.

A guest mix by Jonathyne Briggs, author of a fascinating and highly recommended book on French pop history, Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music, 1958-1980 (Oxford University Press, 2015):

1971—the transition. The destruction of Les Halles in Paris began in 1971 in order to make way for a more modern marketplace, and this action symbolizes how the French found themselves in a period of transition. Just prior to the economic and social problems that would emerge with the oil shocks of 1973, the French were still very much enjoying the economic boom of the economic miracle and continued to embrace new ideas and technologies, albeit with some hesitation manifest in the protests against expanded military bases at Larzac. The Events of 1968 and the death of Charles de Gaulle were just a few years past and the centenary of the Commune reminded many of the revolutionary hope symbolized by the student protests and strikes. In the realm of popular music, French audiences continued to fragment with more and more stylistic influences emerging in different subgenres with the appearance of new artists. And yet, established artists began to experiment with new styles and ideas. 1971 in many ways is a watershed moment in French pop, in which the adventurousness of the French underground is echoed in the music of more popular acts and there was a moment of brief harmony of leisure and introspection. – Jonathyne Briggs

1. Stone et Charden “L’avventura”
2. Serge Lama “Superman”
3. Jean-Jacques Perrey “Baroque Hoedown” (1971 rerelease)
4. Michel Polnareff “Computer’s Dream”
5. Serge Gainbourg “L’hôtel particulier”
6. Catharsis “Masq”
7. Leo Ferré “La solitude”
8. Françoise Hardy “La question”
9. Johnny Hallyday “Fils de personne”
10. Alan Stivell “Pop Plinn”
11. Dalida “Mamy Blue”
12. Nino Ferrer “La maison près de la fontaine”
13. Claude Nougaro “Un grain de folie”
14. Catherine Ribero + Alpes “Diborowska”
15. Jacques Higelin “Aujourd’hui Blues”
16. Mouloudji “Le Temps des cerises”

Links: The Great Albums: History Of French Pop Music

Radio Télévision Suisse has an excellent online audiovisual archive which includes a number of videos featuring 1960s French pop stars. You'll find all the big names like Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, France Gall, Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Sheila and Jacques Dutronc, as well as some rare clips of more obscure artists. There is much to explore on the site, so here are a few of my picks:

Tucked away twelve minutes into a May 1967 episode of news magazine Carrefour is a performance by yé-yé girl Chantal Kelly (I've clipped out her part above). One of my favourite French pop girls of the era, she remains puzzlingly uncomped and unreissued. I wrote about this nine years ago, mentioning she'd only made it onto a couple of compilations, and nothing has changed since. It's hard to understand, as her songs are as worthy as those of the most beloved and frequently reissued girls. Unlike some singers saddled with tame rehashes of American and British hits, Chantal got to record quality originals by top songwriters (the above song is co-written by André Popp), including some highly inventive songs like 'Caribou'. There is more than a whole LP's worth of material begging to be anthologised – someone make it happen.

The rest of these videos are embedded from the RTS site, so require Flash:

Wow, this is twenty incredible minutes of Françoise Hardy in London in 1965. The footage includes Hardy recording her album L'amitié at Pye studios, and walking around the city with her then-boyfriend, photographer Jean-Marie Périer.

Each episode of the Swiss series Chansons à aimer focused on a single music artist, giving the subject a chance to showcase a handful of their songs and be interviewed at some length. In this 1969 episode, Michel Polnareff performs 'La poupée qui fait non',  'Jour après jour' and 'Pourquoi faut-il se dire adieu'.

Happy Bastille Day! Enjoy this mix of 60s-70s French psychedelic rock, psych-pop, freakbeat, experimental/avant-garde sounds and other mind-bending goodness: Quatrième Dimension.

Tracklist (Show details)

1. 5 Gentlemen - L. S. D. 25 ou Les Métamorphoses de Margaret Steinway (1967)
   From L'integrale 1965 / 1968 (2005) on Magic Records.
2. Brigitte Bardot - Le diable est anglais (1968)
   From The Best of Bardot (2004).
3. Les Maledictus Sound - Jim Clark Was Driving Recklessly (1968)
   From Mucho Gusto Records' reissue of Attention (2011).
4. Victoire Scott - 4ième dimension (1968)
   From Ultra Chicks Volume 6: Vous dansez mademoiselle (2002).
5. Papy - Toi le Shazam (1967)
   From Wizzz! Volume 3 (2015) on Born Bad Records.
6. Alessandra and The Atomic Crocus - Ombilic Contact (1974)
   From Smile At Me / Ombilic Contact.
7. Françoise Hardy - Il est trop loin (1967)
   From Ma jeunesse fout le camp...
8. Alice - Viens (1970)
   From The BYG Deal (2009) on Finders Keepers Records.
9. Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem - Je t'aimerai (1977)
   From Vous et nous.
10. Pat Prilly - Polymorphoses (1972)
    From Moog Expressions.
11. Claude Lombard - Midi (1969)
    From MPLS Ltd's reissue of Claude Lombard chante (2010).
12. Antoine - Un éléphant me regarde (1966)
    From the Un éléphant me regarde EP.
13. Les Fleurs de Pavot - Hippies nous voilà (1968)
    From the reissue of Les Fleurs de Pavots (2006).
14. Serge Gainsbourg - New délire (1968)
    Originally appeared on the soundtrack to the film Manon 70. From Le Cinéma de Serge Gainsbourg (2015).
15. Les Papyvores - Le Papyvore (1967)
    From Wizzz! (Psychorama français 66-71) (2001). Reissued on Born Bad Records in 2011.
16. Les Yper-Sound - Too Fortiche (1967)
    From the Too Fortiche / Psyché Rock EP.
17. Dick Rivers - Via Lucifer (1966)
    From Beginner's Guide To French Pop (2012).
18. Jean Le Fennec - Le Sorcier (1969)
    From the reissue of L'abandon (2010).
19. Yamasuki - Yama Yama (1971)
    From Finders Keepers Records' reissue of Le Monde Fabuleux des Yamasuki (2005).
20. Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes - Alpes 1 (1971)
    From Âme debout.
21. Zouzou - Il est parti comme il était venu (1966)
    From L'intégrale (2003).
22. Sullivan - Haschish-faction (1967)
    From The Atomic Café: French Cuts (1999).
23. Miss JJ - Soolaimon (1970)
    Neil Diamond cover from Hally holly hé / Soolaimon.
24. André Popp - Pour celui qui viendra (1972)
    From Wah Wah Records' reissue of Le Cœur en fête (2012).

This post originally contained the Mixcloud mix below, an earlier version of the mix I hadn't intended to upload but am leaving up since some listeners liked it. 

Mixcloud tracklist

1. 5 Gentlemen - L. S. D. 25 ou Les Métamorphoses de Margaret Steinway (1967)
2. Brigitte Bardot - Le diable est anglais (1968)
3. Les Maledictus Sound - Jim Clark Was Driving Recklessly (1968)
4. Victoire Scott - 4ième dimension (1968)
5. Papy - Toi le Shazam (1967)
6. Igor Wakhévitch - Sang pourpre (1971)
7. Alice - Viens (1970)
8. Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem - Je t'aimerai (1977)
9. Pat Prilly - Polymorphoses (1972)
10. Françoise Hardy - Il est trop loin (1967)
11. Antoine - Un éléphant me regarde (1966)
12. Les Fleurs de Pavot - Hippies nous voilà (1968)
13. Serge Gainsbourg - New délire (1968)
14. Delphine - Les Prisons de sa majesté (1967)
15. Les Papyvores - Le Papyvore (1967)
16. Les Yper-Sound - Too Fortiche (1967)
17. Jean Le Fennec - Le Sorcier (1969)
18. Yamasuki - Yama Yama (1971)
19. Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes - Alpes 1 (1971)
20. Dick Rivers - Psychédélic (1966)
21. Bernard Fèvre - Skeese (1975)
22. Zouzou - Il est parti comme il était venu (1966)
23. Sullivan - Haschish-faction (1967)
24. Miss JJ - Soolaimon (1970)
25. André Popp - Pour celui qui viendra (1972)

Links: Playlists

In this clip from Show Tom Jones, which aired on French television on July 30 1966, Serge Gainsbourg performs his marvellous 'Qui est "In" qui est "Out". The show was a one-off special hosted by Tom Jones and mostly features performances by him, but some French artists show up as well, including Françoise Hardy, Eric Charden, Zouzou and Pussy Cat. There are a mix of live and lip-synched performances – Gainsbourg's here being the latter, though he is as charismatic as ever.

Who needs fancy effects when you have Gainsbourg, a razor blade and some large paper signs? I enjoy his manner here, a mix of his natural shyness and an amusingly affected disinterest. This is one of my favourite Gainsbourg songs – it has that groovy organ, great guitar and a relentless stomping beat, and there's the nerdly satisfaction of the way the first two lines of each verse end with "in" or "out" syllables. And nothing beats upbeat cynicism in pop, of which Gainsbourg is of course the master. But amidst the thick cynicism here – which I think you can feel even if you don't understand the lyrics – there is something about the melody I find oddly moving. I get strangely emotional when I hear this song, both because of that quality and just because I find the song so overwhelmingly good.

Though Gainsbourg's appeal and a sense of emotional connection to his songs transcend language, there is something key those of us who don't speak French miss out on. Luckily, there are some resources that help bridge that gap. My Own Role is an excellent collection of English translations of Gainsbourg's songs, but sadly 'Qui est "in" qui est "out"' is not there. But there is a good translation on the blog French One Song At A Time, though it's worth noting "le Cashbox" in the lyrics actually refers to the music charts magazine Cashbox. There's also Mick Harvey's English cover 'Who Is "In" Who Is "Out"' from 1997's Pink Elephants. I love Harvey's versions – the translations are faithful while being carefully adjusted to suit the English language and to preserve rhyming schemes. Happily, he has just released a new album of Gainsbourg covers, Delirium Tremens.

I have a couple more clips from this show up on Youtube: Marianne Faithfull singing 'Si demain', and Françoise Hardy performing 'La Maison ou j'ai grandi' & 'Il est des choses', briefly chatting with Tom Jones between songs.