2023-10-24 15:00:07
Claude François, during a concert at the Palais des Sports, in Paris, in November 1963. DALMAS/SIPA
FRANCE CULTURE – ON DEMAND – PODCAST
Warning: we will be talking here about a time that those under 20 cannot experience, as Aznavour sang. Amendment: it is possible, if you are of the required age – especially if you were born between 1970 and 1980 – to listen to this series with your children, who have probably heard you humming this or that hit. Because “the songs are us: they resemble us and bring us together”Jérôme Sandlarz had the good idea to question those who “made” the hits of his youth and to which we still dance.
First episode: we return to the genesis of Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful! (1962) with Jean-Claude Petit, arranger, among others, of Claude François and Julien Clerc. It is for the latter that Jean-Loup Dabadie wrote My preference (1978), even if, as he explains here, it was first to Serge Rezvani that these two words were addressed.
To the recurring question “how do you make a hit?” », all answer more or less the same thing: that it is a lot of question of luck, of timing; to know, as André Manoukian says, quoting Mozart, “find notes that like each other”. For Alain Souchon, “a good song is a song that does something to you”. Which must also be immediately understandable: “Easy without being stupid”says the author of Sentimental crowd (1993).
Premiers clips
Episode 2. It’s the age of the first booms. Jérôme Sandlarz is 12 years old, makes compilations on cassettes, where you can listen It’s the cotton wool (1986), an incredible success, as Caroline Loeb, who sang it, remembers amusedly. It was also at this time that the first clips, synthesizers and the sequencer arrived, “which made it possible to make loops of sixteen notes”, reminds Maxime Le Forestier, while resounding born somewhere (1987), written in response to the Pasqua law.
A few years later (episode 3), MC Solaar had the great idea of arriving, on CD moreover, with his Get out of here (1990). And it’s good to listen here to someone whose influences can be found as much in Serge Gainsbourg and Leonard Cohen as in reggae, and to hear him say that rap can be something other than a subculture. Follows the success of Fall down the shirt, from Zebda. Released in 1999, a year after the victory of the “black-white-beur” eleven at the World Cup, this song was, for Barbara Lebrun, lecturer at the University of Manchester, “yet another way to celebrate this new vision of France, much happier in diversity”.
Different too, the sensitive voice of Enzo Enzo, returned here to sing to us Just a nice person (1993). Intelligent and necessary, that of Angèle (Balance your what2018), which is heard in episode 4. At the time of #metoo, this last part is an opportunity to talk about musical practices which have radically changed, while Auto-Tune saturates the platforms- forms, where artificial intelligence is now being introduced.
Read also: “Auto-Tune: from Cher to PNL, the Photoshop of the voice” on Arte.tv, the divisive software that makes rappers sing
But these new practices are not the object nor the subject of Jérôme Sandlarz, who, even if he instructs us, above all makes us want to turn up the volume and dance on the tables. Which, in these anxious times, is particularly welcome.
Also read the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers On stage, musicians are rare
The Hits of my life, a documentary series by Jérôme Sandlarz, directed by Agnès Cathou (Fr., 2023, 4 × 57 min). On France Culture, until Thursday, October 26, at 5 p.m.; on demand on all the usual listening platforms.
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