France Gall: France

1996 Warner Music France 0630-14506-2/17463-2

By 1996 French singer France Gall had enjoyed phenomenal success in the music business for more than three decades, but her saturnine album release of that year was a stark reflection of the tragedy that had struck two years earlier. I first encountered France in 1988, shortly after the launch of MTV Europe, when I shared an office with two colleagues who simply couldn’t go without their regular fix of Michael Jackson, George Michael or Terence Trent D’Arby. Despite its 'European' tag, the channel rarely showed videos by artists other than from the US or UK, so it was a surprise to find France in high rotation (once an hour) with her infectious pop hit Ella Elle L'a. The clip was impressive, offering a cool monochrome photo-montage of black jazz artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, as a carefree, smiling France delivered lyrics acknowledging the importance of Fitzgerald and her contemporaries (the song's punning title translated as ‘Ella, she’s got it’). The record had a catchy charm and was a huge international hit: Number One in Austria and Germany, Number Two in France, Top Ten in Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Argentina, and it also saw chart action in Quebec, Asia (especially Japan) and elsewhere in South America. OK, it didn't make much impression in the UK or US, and many would opine that if you don’t make it in those territories you haven’t made it, period. I doubt France was much bothered by such distinctions.

She scored her first hit in 1963 with Ne Sois Pas Si Bête which kicked off a long chain of chart-toppers penned by various scribes including her father Robert (who had written for Edith Piaf, Alain Goraguer and Aznavour, who France knew as Oncle Charles), and, more controversially, Serge Gainsbourg, whose composition Les Sucettes caused much consternation with its riské lyrics. She won the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg, dabbled in psychedelia and dated most of France’s top poppers, but the close of the decade saw her floundering without a label in search of a hit.

It was then that she met singer-songwriter-producer Michel Berger, an established pop star in his own right who would also write, arrange and produce all her material from 1974 onwards. The couple were fêted as the great romance of French pop music and soon married, enjoying highly successful separate careers, putting on the hit stage musical Starmania, working for charity in Africa, touring extensively and racking up platinum discs throughout the Seventies, Eighties, and beyond. But in 1992 Berger died suddenly of a heart attack following a game of tennis. After a period of mourning Gall reemerged, playing concerts and releasing two live albums. But what next? She could sing, choreograph, even produce; the one thing she couldn’t do was write new material. Before she had time to think, she was diagnosed with cancer and took a break for treatment. Time for a makeover. She returned in 1996 with an album which surprised just about everybody: breaking with the musicians she and Berger had worked with for years, she took her project Stateside, hooking up with US musos associated with artists such as Prince and Michael Jackson and cutting tracks at The Record Plant and Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood, New York’s Hit Factory and the Purple One’s own Paisley Park Studio. The songs were grainy reworkings of her and Berger’s old successes, along with a few lesser-known album cuts, but this was no hollow rehash: the R&B-funk sensibility applied to the arrangements and production resulted in a sound that was radically different from anything she had done before.

Bearing just the plain title France, Gall’s new record, with its sombre mono cover and brooding sound, was soon dubbed The Dark Album by fans. Indeed, record execs were so worried that a negative perception would hurt sales that they reissued it the following November with a fiery orange cover and the addition of La Légende De Jimmy from the musical of the same name, penned by Berger and Quebecois lyricist Luc Plamondon about movie icon James Dean. However, the Korean release retained the original gloomy jacket, along with a mournful, stripped-down take on one of Gall’s most popular ballads Si Maman Si to replace Légende. High points include the opening Plus Haut, which was accompanied by a video directed by French New Waver Jean-Luc Godard, shown just once on French television and seen since only in brief clips; a funked-up workout on Résiste, and the streetwise Les Princes Des Villes. But the real jewels here are Message PersonneI, originally written by Berger for Françoise Hardy, with its juxtaposed strings and layered power chords; the maudlin A Quoi II Sert? which resentfully questions the point of continuing in the face of adversity – something Gall may have asked herself – and a grinding, downbeat take on her greatest hit, Ella Elle L’a. Like many hit records, Ella had suffered the indignity of multiple extended and radio versions, a Club remix, a 'Bodybanger’s remix' and a poor, ineptly translated English cover version by Belgian singer Kate Ryan (it’s also a popular ringtone). But as performed on France the song discards its superficial disco-dance aura in favour of a new, workmanlike approach, fusing soulful backing vocals, raw electric guitar chords and cool organ, as the singer adopts a harsher, earthy tone far removed from that of her catalogue of the previous 33 years.

Sadly for France, having lost her husband and struggled with cancer, tragedy struck again in 1997 when the couple's daughter Pauline died from the cystic fibrosis from which, unknown to the public, she had suffered all her life. An unplugged TV special recorded earlier and featuring Aznavour as a special guest aired in 1998, followed by the biographical documentary France Gall Par France Gall in 2001 which served as her farewell. She then lived quietly, giving occasional interviews, until passing away in January 2018. France was her last studio album – but it’s certainly one for which she can and should be remembered. Au revoir...