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 “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 Belles! Beautiful! Beautiful! (1962) with Jean-Claude Petit, arranger, among others, of Claude François and Julien Clerc. It was 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 love 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 silly,” says the author of Foule sentimentale (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 to C’est la ouate (1986), an incredible success as Caroline Loeb, who sang it, remembers, amusedly. It was also at this time that the first clips arrived, the synthesizers and the sequencer, “which made it possible to make loops of sixteen notes”, recalls Maxime Le Forestier, while resonates Born somewhere (1987), written in response to the Pasqua law.
A few years later (episode 3), MC Solar had the great idea of arriving, on CD moreover, with his Bouge de là (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 Falling the Shirt, by Zebda. Released in 1999, a year after the victory of the “black-blanc-beur” eleven at the World Cup, this song was, for Barbara Lebrun, lecturer at the University of Manchester, “yet another way of celebrating this new vision of France, much happier in diversity”.
Also different is the sensitive voice of Enzo Enzo, who returned here to sing Just a Good Person (1993). Intelligent and necessary, that of Angèle (Balance ton quoi, 2018), who is heard in episode 4. At the time of
But these new practices are not the object nor the subject of Jérôme Sandlarz, who, even if he teaches us, above all makes us want to turn up the volume and dance on the tables. Which, in these anxious times, is particularly welcome.