Poupée de Cire

Heavens! The Queen of the yé-yé filles France Gall is 65 years old today!

I have (of course) featured the lovely Mademoiselle Gall before, and indeed she featured in my tribute to the artform that was yé-yé back in July.

However, we can never have enough of her particular brand of coquettishness here at Dolores Delargo Towers...

So, without further ado, here is the lovely Mlle Gall looking suitably excited to have her very own Scopitone - it's Baby Pop:

France Gall - Baby Pop

In this clip of Teenie Weenie Boppie she appears to have discovered "The Summer of Love" big style...

France Gall - Teenie Weenie Boppie

And finally - and featured here again for the simple reason I absolutely adore this song so much - here is the track that (briefly) resurrected her career in the 80s:

France Gall - Ella Elle L'a

France Gall on Wikipedia

Bébé Requin

For no other reason than I rather like her, today I am in the mood for one of France's most popular chanteuses of the "yé-yé" style of the early 1960s. This style of music (described by Susan Sontag as "an example of an entire genre being annexed by the camp sensibility") became a symbol of a resurgent chic Paris, and many girl singers emerged at the time to varying degrees of subsequent success - Sylvie Vartan, Françoise Hardy, Nicole Paquin, Sheila (of "B Devotion" fame) - but the eternally coquettish France Gall seems to most epitomise the era.

With songs written for her by such luminaries as Serge Gainsbourg, including the 1965 Eurovision-winner Poupée de cire, poupée de son, she became a national treasure to the French, and despite drug problems and the death of her husband and producer Michel Berger, is still massively popular today. She lives in semi-retirement in Paris, but a documentary about her life broadcast in 2001 received nine million viewers!

Here's the lady herself...

France Gall - Bebe Requin

France Gall - Avant la Baguerre

France Gall - Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son [Eurovision Song Contest, 1965]

In 1983, Mademoiselle Gall made a brief reappearance in the charts on this side of the pond with her sultry tribute to the legendary Ella Fitzgerald. I love this...

France Gall - Ella, Elle L'a

France Gall
France Gall biography on RFI