C3X World Tour: Leg Three, Week Eight: Rock The Bastille (French-avaganza!)
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Bonjour, bonsoir C3! The time had eventually needed to come. Last year, I released an 11-song pack for Bastille Day. This year, it’s a round number. The Bastille was taken 230 years ago. And like you might have noticed, “230” has “30”. So I tried to convince Kueller, Kloporte, FujiSkunk and i0brendan0 to join me on making this epic release where I am sharing with you my biggest song pack ever, having done 23 songs!
If you are up to discover some new music or to enjoy some songs you love, we got you covered in pretty much every big music genre in that country we commonly call the “Hexagon”. We also provided you some reading with each song to convince you to give it a try (because on a personal note, yeaaaaah I know the numbers of french songs compared to UK/US ones~).
Authored by TheSheepQueen
This is a last minute addition in memory of Philippe “Zdar” Cerboneschi, who died on June 19, 2019 from an accidental fall. Toop Toop is the first song I have known by Cassius and I therefore wanted to pay tribute with it. It’s also a track that fits very well into Rock Band, being vastly different from their other tracks. It features some fast drumming, a groovy bass and a catchy guitar + keys combo that closes on a quite technical solo.
Authored by Kloporte
Jacques Chirac is probably the second most known and likely the most popular president France has ever had. Lots of people blame satirical show Les Guignols De L’Info for depicting him as a lovable idiot and influencing his win in 1995. After the results, he declared in his first speech that he “will be the president of all French people”. It apparently occurred to one man that “tout”, which means “all” in french, sounds like percussions. And this man has decided to make a song out of this, using various quotes from the speech. This is the result.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Je Fume Pu D’Shit made them famous, Stupeflip made them Stupeflip. The first single was in fact what you could call “a troll” to get audiences to think they were a super positive hippie pop band, then they were invited to TV, and people discovered the Crou. One time, they were performing The Fume Pu D’Shit and cut their performance short only to perform this song, accompanied by King Ju calling the audience bastards. Whether this was planned or not is still unknown, and judging by how much the band talks about themselves, we probably will not ever know.
Authored by Kueller
Technically still active, Ludwig von 88 released a solid collection of punk rock in France from the late 80s to late 90s. In the middle of their sophomore album “Houlala II: La Mission” is this song, translated as “The Fantastic Adventures of Mr. MacDonald in Wonderland”. This guitars/vocals punk piece is their magnum opus, sharing the tumultuous journey of the titular character and his anger to the world around him. And here’s a treat for the Pro G/B players!
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Despite being composed of punks, the Négresses Vertes play a music that sounds close to Flamenco and World Music. This is one of their biggest hits, which (and this took some research) is about a winery, which is bodega in spanish. Overall this is about finding the solution to everything in wine. Pretty french isn’t it?
Authored by Kueller
Since 1981, from a small café connected to the Olympia to filling stadiums around France, Indochine carved their place into the new wave scene of the 80s and later became staples of pop rock. In 2009 they released their eleventh record “La République des Météors” (The Republic of Meteors) inspired by the letters of soldiers during the First World War. This album of stadium filling pop rock anthems concludes with “Le Dernier Jour” (The Last Day) with frontman Nicola Sirkis singing about a character stuck in East Berlin as the world seems to fall around them, unsure of the future and reflecting on loss, with the chorus singing “For our souls in the night the last day has arrived”.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Despite this song being more laid back, The Wampas have been famous for their very raw and powerful energy. The lead singer
often goes in the audience, slamming around people, running and yelling the lyrics, at more than 55 years of age. He is also a fan of the Tour De France and this song is a tribute to italian rider Marco Pantani, who died of an overdose in Rimini, which he basically calls a really shitty town.
Authored by Kueller
Electronic duo Justice amazed the electronic world with their release of their first album “Cross” in 2007. A gritty, dirty, chaotic, and surprisingly heavy record. In 2011 they followed up with “Audio, Video, Disco” which can be summed up as 70s arena rock done with synthesizers. In “Ohio”, we start off wth a cover of David Crosby’s “Orléans” (mirrored to now list American states) before kicking off into a powerful synth riff that builds and jams until the final note.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
You can’t say a lot about Mylène Farmer because you can’t know a lot about her. Born in Québec, but moving to France at age 8, she has been widely considered an LGBTQ icon, despite nobody knowing about her sexual orientation. Her songs often deal about the freedom of being different or sex, which is the case in this song, where she disses a man with weak sexual performances, who only cares about her as long as her ass is soft. The music video is coupled with the song Libertine and needs to be watched from start to finish to get a real lesson in music video directing.
Authored by FujiSkunk
Froggy Mix features Pascal Caubet and Krystyna Ferentz behind the scenes and Bettina Antoni on the microphone. That’s the official story; in actual fact, Krystyna Ferentz and Bettina Antoni are the same person! The group debuted in 2001, first with single “Razzmatazz” and then with album No Nagging. Thanks to both “Razzmatazz” and the album’s title track being incorporated into the European release of Japanese anime CardCaptor Sakura, Froggy Mix became very well known to animation fans in Europe and all over the world. Despite that success, Caubet and Ferentz wouldn’t record as Froggy Mix again until 2013, when they teamed up on “C’est Party!” with, of all people, Snoop Dogg!
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Philippe Katerine is something of a UFO in french culture. One day he is performing in Jimmy Fallon’s show a song where most of
the lyrics consist of laughter, the other day he is getting a César (the french Oscar) for the best second role playing an introvert and lonely municipal pool guard. This time, he is singing about not being alone, “like a cigarette in a pack of cigarettes”, over an instrumental by electro artist SebastiAn.
Authored by FujiSkunk
Electronica forefather Jean-Michel Jarre continued pioneering with his third wide-release album, Les Chants Magnétiques. The name is a play on “champs magnétiques” or “magnetic fields”, which in French sounds the same as “chants magnétiques” or “magnetic singing”. The “singing” comes from sampled vocals and other digital effects provided by the Fairlight CMI, one of the first times the professional sampler was featured on an album. “Les Chants Magnétiques Part II” is perhaps the album’s best known song, especially to chiptune enthusiasts, who will recognize the song from the Commodore 64 version of Bomb Jack. In 1991, Jarre remixed “Part II” for his greatest-hits album Images. That is the mix featured here.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Shaka Ponk have become quite famous for their very dynamic stage antics and GoPros attached to their microphones, but this is the song that really made them as big as they are now. While being more laid back than other tracks of them, My Name Is Stain is a fun track that is certain to get heads bopping despite the depressing lyrics.
Authored by i0brendan0
Back when I started to develop my own music tastes, i got heavily into Freezepop. All I would listen to was Freezepop. Then, after some time, I decided, for some reason I don’t remember, to not listen to Freezepop and find some other artists to listen to. The main 3 artists of that time were Royksopp, Ladytron, and the following artist, Yelle. At the time, A cause des garçons, Je veux te voir, and 85A were the songs I listened to from her. I really liked the dancy aspects of her songs and, while I didn’t know french at the time and I still don’t, I enjoyed the flow of her lyrics. It wasn’t until recently, within a few years, that I heard some of her more recent songs. Complètement fou and Que veux-tu were some of the better ones. I ended up finding the stems to Que veux-tu and knew immediately that I had to chart it. I very much enjoyed charting the song. Thankfully, with the help of TheSheepQueen to provide a keys transcription, I present to you Que veux-tu by Yelle. pour votre plaisir.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
There’s no way you don’t know Serge Gainsbourg, Gainsbarre, the frenchiest man alive, period. This track is the last track off his last album, and is a cover of the Édith Piaf song. Gainsbourg didn’t change the lyrics, so they still adress a man, which turned the track into a hit in gay bars. One could see this as his last provocation, against the army which has always had this image of a manly man job for manly men.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Maxenss (or MAXOULEZOZO) has been a rising YouTuber in the past years, thanks to his wonderful cover of Hello by Adele and especially this song, whose title is either Roubignolles (A polite word for the testicles) or La Chanson De La Démonétisation (The Demonetization Song). As you might guess, this was released in 2016 as an answer to the (at the time) new YouTube policies to make the site advertiser friendly by demonetizing videos with touchy subjects and bad words. This song does exactly just that and is made entirely of insults, ranging from “Fuck your mom” to “Your dad builds guitars in Zimbabwe”.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Despite their leader, Manu Chao, making it bigger, the Mano Negra is considered a widely influencial band of the 90s for mixing punk and latin sounds. This song is probably their most recognisable one for its horns and spanish lyrics, like in a lot of their songs, despite the band being from Paris!
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Addictions is the first single off the second best (in my humble opinion) Superbus album, Lova Lova. It’s another of their songs about love, but it’s their trademark, and they do it well! The song is most notable for its video, directed by Martin Fougerolles, the man behind Vertigo by U2 and Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
How could I escape making a song called “The Sheeps”? This cut from Matmatah’s debut album was the first song they recorded and is based on a traditional melody from their homeland, Brittany. The whole lyrics are sentences rhyming with “-en” and talk about their casual day shearing sheeps, repairing their bikes, getting drunk, buying biscuits, getting high, drowning people from Paris, and all that stuff.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Au DD is the hit comeback from cloud rap french pioneers PNL. The song talks about their life growing up doing illegal business and growing tired of being on top of the world. The band is notorious for breaking popularity records with little to no promotion, and have always been completely independant, selling their first album themselves in their neighbourhood and STILL making it a staple of the new wave of french rap!
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Born in Italy, Nino Ferrer moved to Paris after World War 2 in 1947. This single is part of his first album which spawned two of his
biggest hits. This is one of them. Ferrer has always been a big fan of R&B, so when he heard the song Big Nick by James Booker, he understood “picnic” and decided to “sample” it and give it a more nervous tone, while listing all of the food he is taking on a picnic with his family, but in a depressing twist, has to go home because of the rain.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Boogie Body is initially a 1993 production instrumental from the Koka Média label. It blew up the same year when it was used as the intro to one of the most famous TV shows of all time, C’Est Pas Sorcier, the equivalent of Bill Nye The Science guy. It has deeply impacted popular culture and the minds of the people who grew up with it, many even saying that the studies they did and the job they have are thanks to this show.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
While Trust is most famous for their song Antisocial, featured in Guitar Hero: World Tour, meaning that this is not even their debut, Le Mitard is one of their biggest songs. The lyrics were adapted from a book written by Jacques Mesrine, a famous robber who outran the police until they killed him in 1979, and who notably was dubbed “public enemy n°1”.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Canal + Le Jour is the first theme to the fourth channel in France, Canal +. The channel used to be notable for its politically incorrect humor, and has spawned and shaped some of the best comedy. It’s also famous for soccer, cinema and “the saturday night movie” which comes from a genre I will obviously not name.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
On the paper, there was NO WAY a celtic rap album could even achieve mainstream success when the french scene was ruled by people rapping about the hood and the casual having sex. Manau proved them all wrong. This song has reached the top of the french charts in 1998 and stayed there for 12 weeks. This earned the album a million certified sales, and twice that number for the song itself, making it the 16th most sold single of all time in the country.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Ramon Pipin is often considered the french Zappa for a reason: He has always been ambitious and genre-blending, but his 1980 album rightfully titled “1980: No Sex!” is one of his highest career moments. The album features no less than 50 musicians and goes from parodying Kraftwerk to a song about loving a dead girl to a 10 seconds song describing the new right wing as “a small IQ, a big bunker”. L’Homme Objet seems to be about a male blow-up doll, with the chorus inciting women to put his “valve” in their mouths.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Christine is the second big hit from Christine And The Queens, or Chris, off her album Chaleur Humaine. The song has enigmatic lyrics like a lot of her songs, and is probably her most famous, therefore her most parodied. For the interesting fact, she started music when she was living with Drag Queens who encouraged her to compose things.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Does Daft Punk really need an introduction? This worldwide famous duo made the french electro scene blow up in no time and has inspired hundreds and hundreds of artists. This track off their 2005 album is probably the one that sounds the most like how they look, only featuring the lyrics “We’re only human after, much in common, after all”, confirming that while being somewhere high in another galaxy, they are still much like you and me under the helmet.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
Les Fatals Picards are one of the bands lucky for being more famous for their career rather than their performance at Eurovision. This 2014 song is about the son of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, making a word play on “Fils de Pute”, whose translation you can look up by yourself.
Authored by TheSheepQueen
The Boléro is the most famous piece from Maurice Ravel. Arranged around a melody growing from the quietest possible to the loudest possible in the span of 16 minutes. This piece was recently played in its entirety in commemoration of the Armistice, celebrating the end of World War 1.
And that’s all! That might be the right moment to tell you that in 2 hours and a few minutes (2PM in west US, 5pm in east US), Kueller is hosting a stream where she will play all of the songs in this release, along with some french history. You will find it right here:
Thanks for all your hard work on this one
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” /> Good job teamKeeping the content Canadian since 2017!
SomeOldGuys: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/someoldguys
MrPrezident: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/MrPrezidentI did my salute to France last year (http://customscreators.com/index.php?/page/index.html/_/genius-in-france-r20713) but this release is c’est magnifique!
Yet again another fantastic set
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” /> CES’T MAGNIFIQUE
:wub:It’s awesome to see French songs being done, thank you! Cramp En Masse might see the light of day after all.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_cheeky.001.gif” /> It’s awesome to see French songs being done, thank you! Cramp En Masse might see the light of day after all.
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_cheeky.001.gif” />Crampe en Masse are from Québec though, this release was dedicated to french music
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_wink.gif” />
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