Serge Gainsbourg was the absolute king of French pop in the 1960s. As well as putting out a lot of his own stuff, he discovered and wrote songs for a variety of young, female pop acts. They were part of the yé-yé scene, which grew to cover much of Europe during the 1960s and has had a lot of influence on much of the indiepop and more mainstream stuff of today. It was named after the cries of 'Yeah! Yeah!' that are a feature of many of the songs of this style. The scene was definitely fuelled by-and-large by the attractiveness of the singers - there is a reason why today is the first time I've featured a picture of the artist for a SOTD - but there was enough appeal in the music (almost always written by older male masterminds, such as Gainsbourg, although Francoise Hardy was a notable exception) for the songs to appeal as well. The scene was very big in Quebec as well, leading to this song being covered by the Arcade Fire. This is probably the most famous song from the yé-yé scene, as it won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965 - I think it's probably safe to say that this will be the only ever Eurovision winner on this blog. Despite her long career, Gall no longer performs or even acknowledges this, her most famous track, due to a disagreement with Gainsbourg. His attitude towards her is evident here, as the title, 'puppet of wax, puppet of song', clearly refers to her - look up the lyrics to 'Les Sucettes' if you want an even more obvious example of what he was trying to turn her into.
It wasn't going to last forever, obviously, but yé-yé was definitely fun while it lasted.
France Gall – Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son
No comments:
Post a Comment