Meet the musicians who are trying to revive French-speaking pop

The other day I went to see a new riot girl group called Claire Dance play in an abandoned factory in Bagnolet, a suburb of Paris. They were awesome: the kind of sonic kick I’ve been waiting for over a decade for an all-female band to deliver. I half wondered if it was simply my own imperfect command of French that left me clueless about their message. ‘It was all English“, was the guitarist’s response afterwards. How come they never considered accompanying such emotionally charged music with lyrics in their native language? “It’s considered a grimace” , she replied. “We only like English music.”

That France is self-conscious about its language will surprise no one. Where the borders of other languages ​​are porous, the French Academy controls its own with all the open-mindedness of a North Korean political commissar. The Frenchification of English neologisms has been a policy recommended since 1972 and effectively enshrined in law since the 1990s. There is, however, a gaping cultural anomaly in this pattern, an exception which confirms but increasingly undermines the rule: strange disappearance of French from rock and pop of national origin.

Since the Toubon law of 1994, 35 percent of the radio airtime has been reserved for French-speaking songs. France is also the only country to require its Eurovision films to be sung (at least partially) in its own language – when bearded hipster Sébastien Tellier dared to perform in English in 2008, the reaction was for the least mixed. Yet the “alternative” scene is leaning more and more towards English, and the reasons come down to that most idiotic of justifications: “accessibility.”

During the Thirty glorious after World War II, when a relatively monoglot but economically powerful middle class emerged in France, the local idiom dominated the airwaves. A distinctive style of classic French pop emerged, pioneered by Jacques Dutronc, Serge Gainsbourg, Michel Polnareff and the late and everlasting Françoise Hardy. The songs were good and the production, contrary to English-speaking standards, prioritized vocals over music.

Even as recently as the 1980s, when a brief and brilliant flowering of local talent – ​​notably Étienne Daho, Mylène Farmer, Alain Bashung and the excellent boy-girl combo Les Rita Mitsouko – created some of the best records of the decade , he still held strong. Many of these artists have at some point dabbled in English; no bar Hardy has managed to pull off anything vaguely convincing. Wisely, they stuck to what they knew.

But linguistic oblivion was upon us. The forms this took were two different strains of electronic music. One of them, most famously peddled by two nerds from Versailles calling themselves Air, was a kind of light, slightly saccharine listening music that became a staple for phone commercials around the world. The other was the “French touch”, a supercharged mix of acid house and sanitized techno proposed by artists like Justice and Daft Punk. The first of these types of music became synonymous with a certain idea of ​​good taste; transformed second world pop as we know it. They may have represented France’s greatest cultural export at the time, but their lyrics were almost exclusively in English.

In 2003, the singer of the most revered French-speaking rock band of the time, Noir Désir, killed his girlfriend in a hotel room in Vilnius. Related or not, the French language subsequently disappeared from all but the most disposable manufactured pop songs, which clung to French lyrics in part to exploit those scary airplay quotas. The hip hop of Marseille and the eastern suburbs of Paris, a source of moral panic for conservative France, was the only other genre in which his precious language remained relevant. That it was heavy with iconoclastic street slang, gleeful in its abuse of Americanisms, and extremely popular must have put a strain on the Academy.

As for French rock, “it was a dark time,” says singer Paul Loiseau. This may explain why he is one of a small number of musicians fighting against the dominance of English. Loiseau is that rarest of things, a contemporary crooner who never comes across as backwards: imagine a Gallic Cocker Jarvis with curly hair, better dance moves and tighter pants. He also understands that if you want to sing what you want to say, you should probably stick to your own (in his case) inherently lyrical language.

Loiseau is a founding member of a place called Tony Collectif. In Anglo-Saxon terms, it’s a less precious equivalent of Hackney’s Cafe Oto, and a place where a death metal concert can be smoothly followed by an acid-house evening. There is no other place comparable to Paris, notably because it gives pride of place to French-speaking musicians. One of them is my wife, Orphée, a classically trained singer who sells a wild mix of wacky pop that’s part Nico’s. Marble Index to three-part Madonna from the “Lucky Star” era.

The small number of Parisian musicians reclaiming their language constitute a large part of its most interesting performers. Improbably danceable indie combo Pleasure Principle is a captivating live act, complete with basslines that meet double-cross between early Led Zepplin and classic Chic. Then there’s Gino Rotten’s slightly terrifying DIY electro, which somehow manages to sound both utterly seductive and just like you might imagine Cherie Blair’s inner monologue if she were a goth with an unhealthy passion for analog synths. The most famous is the decidedly eccentric rock group La Femme, the only one of the group to have made an impression outside the French-speaking world. They’re intermittently brilliant, but strangely determined not to let their listeners forget their time on vacation in Los Angeles.

One difference that French plays, Orpheus says, is that the language lends itself to lyrical refrains and spoken verses, themselves made musical by the incredibly complex rhyme schemes hammered into the head of every Republican schoolboy. Loiseau agrees, comparing the approach of some Anglo-Saxon impersonators—many of whom signal their Anglophone influences via sartorial cosplay—to the affectations of a literary hipster who insists on communicating exclusively via a vintage typewriter.

The small group of musicians flying a homemade tricolor flag for their language are nevertheless fighting an uphill battle. If they put out records, they’ll do it themselves, because no one else will be interested. Meanwhile, those who swear that English guarantees them “a more international audience” will get more bookings but will probably never achieve what English speakers actually want from the music. But we are irrelevant in this equation. Terrible English is the world’s idiom, and it’s no longer our job to fix it.

It would be easy to rejoice, but I suspect that any help we might get from our neighbors’ misfortunes might ultimately come back to bite us. British pop isn’t going to lose its mother tongue any time soon, but homogeneity takes many forms. And to the extent that I am qualified to judge our own musical culture, its effects have long since calcified.