*edit* Grr, could somebody add a W to the title to make this readd "review"? sigh*

I had no idea where to put this, and didn't feel it waranted a specific thread, but my fave current pop music critic (yes, that's his title) is Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker of all places. Not just cuz he digs a lot of the music I like, that's underappreciated in the US (he's written articles about why The Pet Shop Boys still make great records, what the US is missing out on with Kylie, how genius Xenomania and Girls Aloud are in their way as well as writing about hip hop and more "arty" US indie pop), but I like how he takes records that the average New Yorker reader would either never have any knowledge of, or consider themselves above, and in a typically New Yorker pretentious fashion (don't get me wrong, I subscribe and love the mag) explains what's good about them. I just love his style (he did a great piece early last year about Lady Gaga and got her pros and cons dead on I thought).

Anyway, this week he did a review of one o fmy fave releases of last year, now out in the US, Annie - Don't Stop

Her songs bounce and skate—they’re danceable, but lighter than straight house.

Pop Music

What Do You Want?

Annie’s underground mainstream.

by Sasha Frere-Jones

January 11, 2010

There is a recurring aversion on the part of American labels to foreign singers, and it sometimes amounts to a mutual distrust. Kylie Minogue, the tiny Australian who has annexed most of Europe, has had only three hits here. Girls Aloud, the devilishly clever flagship act of the producer Brian Higgins and his Xenomania production team, generally doesn’t release records outside Britain. For many such acts, the American mountain can sometimes appear like too much bother, since even superstars can’t gain purchase. But given the retro-eighties feel and Euro-friendly nature of the year’s biggest female star, Lady Gaga, why not admit an actual European, who is even more fond of the eighties, into the game?

Anne Lilia Berge Strand, a Berlin-based Norwegian singer-songwriter known as Annie, has no American label behind her. Her second album, “Don’t Stop,” a brash, bright, and easily absorbed pop effort, was completed in 2008 but is only now being released, jointly, by Annie’s Totally Records and an independent label in Norway called Smalltown Supersound. (After working on an earlier version, Annie was dropped by Island in Europe.)

Is there something inherently Norwegian about Annie that might scare off Americans? She sings in English, and her accent, audible when speaking, is almost imperceptible when she sings, and her high, aspirate voice avoids the rafters and stays in a conversational range and timbre. (This might be a strike against her, considering the taste Americans have developed for glass-shatterers, thanks in part to “American Idol.”)

As a performer, Annie shouldn’t be a hard sell. A small, sharp, and evenly proportioned blonde, she photographs well and throws herself confidently into all kinds of dancing and role-playing. With Annie, there is no particularly complicated relationship to pop—she makes records and videos as if she organically, naturally loved the form. She is not a refugee from the world of theatre, and she has no unpublished string quartet about wombats up her sleeve. In fact, Annie’s first release—ten years old now—was “The Greatest Hit,” a new song sung over a big sample of Madonna’s “Everybody” (which was her first single, released in 1982). Not exactly fighting the system. Annie’s initial bit of brilliance was the 2003 single “Chewing Gum,” produced by Richard X, who was one of the few bedroom-studio types to cross over from the British mashup scene of the early aughts into actual producing.

Richard X’s first productions reconfigured hits from the eighties, like Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?,” but he and Annie started from scratch on “Chewing Gum,” and came up with a song that easily could have fallen off the back of a 1981 Tom Tom Club album. The sounds, as with most Annie songs, are all brief, discrete flashes and blips, danceable but lighter in bearing than straight house. The songs do not generally thump—they bounce and skate. As is customary with Annie lyrics, the singer is in control—she’s dissing disposable, dumb boys who think they are chocolate but are only chewing gum. The more sentimental and straightforward “My Heartbeat,” a small blast of sincerity with the drive of a rock band playing disco, was named the best song of 2004 by Pitchfork.

With the spread of talent shows and of YouTube clips of those competitions, odds have changed slightly for Europeans. Leona Lewis, the winner of the third season of “The X-Factor,” in 2006, had 2008’s biggest-selling single, the purple ballad “Bleeding Love.” And, on the main stage, Susan Boyle, currently at 1.8 million units sold, set a record for best first-week sales ever for a female singer.

As an artist who owns her own masters, Annie may be in a position to actually earn something back, especially in the digital realm, where the costs of physical production and distribution are sometimes zero. And though radio moves more slowly than ever to adopt new sounds, television and films are moving faster. One or two licenses to television advertisements could put Annie in the black for the year. (An infinitely more idiosyncratic act from Britain, the brilliant and slightly cracked Micachu and the Shapes, has already landed in a Crayola commercial, a type of deal that will net almost any band more than it will ever see from a year of album royalties.)

Generally popular on blogs, Annie now has a wide-net kind of album that can bring her into as many homes as the viral network allows. Several record executives have told me that NPR has become the prime tool for selling albums outside the teen-pop continuum; “Don’t Stop,” equally a contemporary dance album and a throwback for parents who are stuck on their Yaz records, would fit right in.

Annie’s commitment to brightness is total. “Don’t Stop” rides for eight bumptious numbers without trouble, until her cheeriness lands her in the wrong television advertisement. “The Breakfast Song” is a stomper, like aluminum and plastic thwacked together, and the core of the song is a single, possibly unnecessary question: “What do you want, what do you want for breakfast?” Turned into a chant, a potentially cute idea devolves into a harangue. If she takes away all the spritz, Annie gets lost. “When the Night” is the kind of neon-lit dime-store ballad that a-ha or Paul Young could have handled in the eighties, but Annie can’t find her way in the melancholy. (Put her back onto the dance floor and she’ll fold in the heartbreak between all the strobes.)

Annie worked with Higgins on “Don’t Stop,” as well as with Richard X and Paul Epworth, but she is a one-woman show if she needs to be. Many of the hundreds of songs that were written for “Don’t Stop” were drafted at home on Annie’s laptop. She also uses a Tenori-on, a delightful electronic instrument that combines a small synthesizer with a sequencer that renders visually, like a Lite-Brite set come to life. (The British singer Little Boots makes use of one in her live shows, and it often upstages her band.) Though there is nothing inherently political about Annie’s music or her story—as has been true, sadly, for thousands of acts through the years—she can be seen as part of a subtle trend that women and machines are creating together. One of “Don’t Stop” ’s tracks, “I Don’t Like Your Band,” confronts a problem familiar to anyone who dates musicians: “It’s not you, it’s your tunes—I don’t like your band.” There’s nothing a mere haircut will do for this guy, and she drops the auxiliary message in the middle of the song: “Buy yourself a sequencer and let the games begin!” Those on the side of the machines are more mobile and not as easily tied to a sound, or to as gendered a sound, as a live band.

As telling as Annie’s endorsement of sequencers is her take on radio, in “Songs Remind Me of You,” another collaboration with Richard X, which gives a huge nod to Giorgio Moroder’s work on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” This one does thump, though the mood is slightly lost and the words work around a regret. As the song unfolds and the girl sings about a boy from the past, the chorus sounds oddly like a taunt, although the implication is that the boy whose promises “vanished” is actually quite successful: “How does it feel to hear your songs on the radio? And does it hurt to hear those songs on the radio?” The singer loves these songs, apparently—“Music so good, music so clear”—and her delight reinforces the tinge of empathy in the chorus. The singer seems to feel that getting your songs on the radio might not be worth what it costs the songwriter. ♦

Edited January 22, 201015 yr by EricMontreal22

I remember I criticised him here, didn't I? It was an article on Timbaland, I believe.

What I mind with many of these critics is that the critique is about everything else except music! Usually it is a verbose philosophical musing on the state of the industry, singer's look, scandals surrounding him or her... Tonnes of other, irrelevant stuff and very little about the production, the instruments, the vocal arrangements. It's just mentioned in passing: "lush Hollywood strings" (they are always lush and always Hollywood), "uninspired vocals", "thumping bass beat" (it's always thumping) and so on... One could compile a dictionary of clichés.

See I get that, but I don't think it applies to Sasha. It's true he always goes on at length about the background of the performer--but this isn't a music mag (and his reviews are far better than, say, Rolling Stones) and most New Yorker readers need the context and background or they'll skip the article. I think he describes the appeal of the *music* a lot actually, and spot on--though, again I agree that most magazine music critics, simply don't. BUT, you're right this review works more, and best, as an introduction to, in this case, Annie then an actual review.

Not a review, but I wasn't sure whether to post this as a separate thread!

<p>

<span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Alison Goldfrapp's shakeup at the disco</font></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><b><font face="Verdana"Alison Goldfrapp talks new musical directions and wonders why people find her coming out as a 'midlife lesbian' surprising</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma"> Craig McLean</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:9pt;"><font face="Verdana">Ten years into the life of her band, Alison Goldfrapp didn't expect to cause so much fuss. But there she was, prominent in the Sunday papers at the end of last year. "Suddenly your life is seen in a completely different context," she muses. "I'm not very comfortable with that sort of thing, because I don't like to court any attention other than if it's really to do with the music." The new "fame" of the singer who lends her name to Goldfrapp? As a "midlife lesbian". In a story published in late December Goldfrapp was outed as being in a relationship with the film editor Lisa Gunning. Gunning worked on Nowhere Boy, the John Lennon biopic, for which Goldfrapp — the band — collaborated on the musical score, recorded with a 35-piece string section at Abbey Road.

"I don't know why people would find it surprising," Goldfrapp said later. "Everything we've ever done — the music, the looks, the shows — has all been quite ambiguous and undefinable, and that's how I am. I don't like to be defined by my sexuality, which swings wherever I like to swing. I've had lovely, long relationships with men as well. I just happen to be in a relationship with a lady at the moment. I don't like to be pigeonholed in my life or my music either. The best policy seems to be to go with what feels right, so I do."

Goldfrapp cackles about "the mechanics" of being outed. "The mechanics! I don't think you wanna know about the mechanics," she says with "oo-er missus" relish. Judging from her guffaws we have, it seems, wandered into a scene from Carry On Being a Midlife Lesbian. "Oh, those mechanics. Well, that was a bit of a shocker actually, because obviously I didn't know anything about it all. A friend texted me: 'Oh, there's a really nice picture of you and Lisa in this magazine.' I was like: 'What picture? Where? Really? Hold on a minute . . .'

"And there was a picture, a nice big one. Yeah," she sniffs, "we didn't know anything about that. In fact the newspaper was a little bit naughty — they didn't ask anybody, and they didn't tell anyone either."

How did it know? "I really don't know," she says with a relaxed shrug.

The revelation added another layer of intrigue to the Goldfrapp phenomenon. Goldfrapp the duo was formed in 1999 with Alison and the synth and keyboard wizard Will Gregory. The two couldn't be more different: Gregory, 40, is tall, hairy and wears a rucksack as if he's just stepped off the 8.43 from Bath (he lives near Chippenham). He never joins Alison on stage, preferring to stand by the mixing desk, cocking an eager ear to the sound quality; in fact, he rarely joins her on tour either. She is the on-stage exhibitionist and blows in today in fancy coat, blonde ringlets and Ray-Bans. The coat comes off, but the shades do not. For a brilliant on-stage exhibitionist, in conversation she is terribly reticent. Goldfrapp doesn't like to give too much away, even how old she is (an educated guess puts her age at somewhere around 43).

Together, they're fantastic and fantastical electro-pop innovators whose irresistible singles (Strict Machine, Ooh La La, Ride a White Horse) and stirring, sexually charged artwork and stage presentations (European fairytale lore with a glam-fetish twist) evoke everyone from Kate Bush to Eurythmics, Hazel O'Connor to Madonna. Their ultra-disco fifth album Head First is about to be released.

Gregory's mum is not, it seems, fully up to speed with the whys and wherefores of her son's day job. "She says to me: 'That's five albums now — aren't you tired of it yet?' "

"At least she knows what you bloody do!" his musical partner harrumphs. " 'Working? What's that? What are you doing then?' " she says, adopting the high-pitched, slightly nagging voice of the querulous mother. But is Pat Goldfrapp still confused as to what exactly the youngest of her six children does for a living, given the mounting success of the fistful of albums that Goldfrapp have released?

"Well, my mum's quite old actually. Bless her. She's obviously pleased for me, and really proud. But I think it's quite hard for her to comprehend what it is I'm doing. She came to the Albert Hall last year. So did my auntie, who said she thought the dancers were very distasteful, and that they didn't have to stoop that low to entertain people, ha ha!

"My mum's got a real problem with the pagan thing," she says of the self-designed, William-Blake-meets-Wicker Man visuals in their stage shows. "She thinks that's very anti-Christian as well. Anyway, God," she sighs, "I shouldn't be saying all this. The Times is the sort of paper that she reads."

The woman renowned for "playing" a Theremin onstage with her groin and sticking horses' heads on her dancers admits that her mum's puzzlement infects her too. "I dunno, actually — why am I doing that?"

Gregory likes living in the peace of the countryside. Goldfrapp, who moved back to London two years ago (she was bored with living in the West Country and missed her friends), is a vampy dominatrix onstage but can be hilariously grumpy off it.

As a teenager in Hampshire — she was ten years younger than her nearest sibling — she was the archetypal convent girl gone bad. A self-inflicted tattoo on her left forefinger (it's a sort of trident) is a remnant of her wayward time at a comprehensive after she failed the exams for the convent's senior school. She moved to London, lived in squats, went to art college and began singing with the rave-era outfit Orbital and Tricky.

Gregory, meanwhile, was a classically trained musician who performed regularly with the composer Michael Nyman — he played oboe on Nyman's soundtrack to Peter Greenaway's 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover. Later, while living in Bristol he became involved with Portishead. Then a mutual friend introduced him to Goldfrapp. What were their first impressions of each other?

"I was a stroppy bitch," she recalls. "She was absolutely punctual," he says, "and in my world, which was slightly dazed and confused, that was a huge point. I was very impressed. This girl meant business."

Gregory, she says approvingly, "was slightly bumbling ... which was good because everyone I'd worked with was totally cool. You had to be cool. And Will was not cool. I thought that was a really good thing. There weren't any of the rules that I was so, so bored with."

Head First, Goldfrapp's big, shiny Eighties stadium disco of a new album, is the follow-up to Seventh Tree, from 2008. That album added folky, pastoral flavours to the Goldfrapp mix, and was itself the successor to the throbbing electro-pop of Supernature in 2005. The new album is short (nine songs), sharp and to the point. It's unabashedly retro, evoking the zooming synths of Van Halen and Jan Hammer's Miami Vice theme, and proudly poppy. Unsurprisingly, the Italians and Germans love it.

"We wanted to make a direct and euphoric sound," Goldfrapp says. "It's very much about the melodies and the celebratory feel to the songs. Atmosphere-wise and sentiment-wise, they're kind of ... fun."

Goldfrapp have consistently been ahead of the musical curve. Madonna was spotted taking a copy of Supernature into her Pilates class. After talking about the band in her music and her interviews, she was dubbed Oldfrapp. Since the release of Seventh Tree the likes of La Roux and Little Boots have come along with their own take on Eighties pop. Are Goldrapp now copying the copyists?

Goldfrapp concedes that, yes, absolutely, she's been listening to "those big boosh sounds" of Eighties-friendly drums. "And also our keyboard sounds are quite fat, lead melodies, which was definitely a thing of that era. So yeah, you can't deny that. But I think our influences have come from all kinds of places and eras, and maybe some are more obvious than others. Somebody asked me if we'd been influenced by the New Romantics. Which I really don't see — that coldness . . .

"We were trying to make something that had a much warmer sound to it. The La Rouxs and the Little Boots are referencing something completely different."

Finally, returning to the notall-that-hot-really subject of her sexuality, Goldfrapp shrugs. "It's not like I've been hiding it. But I haven't been going round, you know ... I guess it was probably gonna happen, but I didn't think anyone would be interested enough to put in such a large picture [of us]. I'm glad it was a nice picture, though. That's what I was more concerned about. I'm glad I wasn't wearing my dungarees and Doc Martens that day . . ."

Head First is released on March 22 by Mute</font></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article7041305.ece</font></b></span></p>

Edited February 26, 201015 yr by Sylph

I'm so looking forward to this! Yes, they can be pretentious but at their best, Goldfrap is awesome. It's funny, I've seen Goldfrapp live twice, and never even thought one way or the other about Alison's sexuality...

Of course Moroder references are de rigeur nowadays with any synth based act, but the fact that elsewhere she has said both lead single Rocket, and Head First are big Moroder hommages has me excited (Head First is based on the brooding synths of Moroder's Cat People soundtrack, and the title track done with Bowie)

*I wish a mod could fix the title of this thread to read "review" not "revie" so I wouldn't be embarassed whenever I saw it *

(Head First is based on the brooding synths of Moroder's Cat People soundtrack, and the title track done with Bowie)

So, you really love synths? Or just Moroder's synths? That's weird! Or maybe not!

I'm sure that if you'd say your favourite instrument is the cor anglais or the viola, you'd be considered a pompous bore.

So perhaps synths are the only alternative.

It is weird. I wonder if it's some sort of backlash to my childhood--I started violin at a young age (it was the Suzuki method--learning primarily by ear so I started when I was 3) and till I was 12 or so, most of what I listened to (by choice and also because of my teachers) was classical music. So then when I got into pop music I sorta embraced what many would call the least "authentic"--synth based dance music, etc. But no, a lot of synth stuff does bug or bore me--but I think Moroder was (at his best) groundbreaking--I do love what he did with it (and he often did incorporate full orchestras too at least in his disco period--in the 80s that was less popular). Also, I do prefer fully orchestrated movie soundtracks--from Hermman to Hisaishi for the most part, yet I think Moroder's synth scores (as well as a handful of others by Tangerine Dream, etc) are masterful. The problem is, what started off as groundbreaking (his Oscar winning, spooky score for Midnight Express, or the perfect American Gigolo and Cat People scores, Tangerine Dream's Risky Business score, etc) by the mid 80s suddenly someone realized you could make a synth score for a film FAR cheaper than an orchestral one and every cheapo movie had a cheapo synth score--so that the very sound of them basically screamed bad movie--it became saturated. Still I think the best ones stand out.

(And no, my fave instrument is the viol da gamba...)

(I swear I'm kidding Though as a kid I was obsessed with harpsichords--I always thought I'd be rich, by the age I am now--HA--and have my own. I still am a sucker for that sound.)

Edited March 5, 201015 yr by EricMontreal22

Gabriella Cilmi worked with Xenomania:

She did but I find her subpar--it was Xenomania trying to do Duffy/Whinehouse and not their true stuff (plus her live vocals suck). Fun first single though. (Sorry, are you a fan? or why did you just bring her up? *confused* )

'Cause she advertises this second album as dance/disco.

I've just listened to a few songs from Goldfrapp, but they seem a little too slow and ethereal to me. I'm much more a fun of the upbeat stylings of La Roux. Maybe I should check out this Annie person?

As the main article mentioned though, it is a crime Kylie hasn't been more accepted in North America. And Girls Aloud are always sure to get me in a good mood. Love them. "Call the Shots" is one of my favourites.

Edited March 19, 201015 yr by Amello

The best part of Girls Aloud is Nadine. From the accent to the voice to that fierce and aloof swagger she has. Just love her in their live performances. So over the top almost like a drag queen. Or Dorian Lord.

And she was dating Jesse Metcalf LOL. I love all the Girls though... Even the poor Ginger one.

Amello do check out Annie--also if you haven't, check out Little Boots which got compared a lot to LaRoux but I prefer (she is a bit more polished though--laroux has a better rough energy)

<p>

<span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Le Pop Star</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">By Benoit Denizet-Lewis</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:9pt;"><font face="Verdana">Benjamin Biolay sat, shoulders hunched, in a smoky, cluttered recording studio on the outskirts of Paris. He had just returned from a month's vacation with his wife, Chiara Mastroianni (daughter of the cinematic titans Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni), at Deneuve's country house in Normandy. He should have appeared refreshed, but instead he looked as if he had spent the month in this windowless room, chain-smoking cigarettes and contemplating the cruelty of life. The French, after all, can seem mean and aloof when they're really just feeling shy, and Biolay is no exception. He knows that he can come off as con, meaning ''jerk'' or ''jerklike'' -- the French conveniently use the word as a noun and an adjective -- when he doesn't intend to. But Biolay makes the look work. With his wavy brown hair, soulful brown eyes and sensual pout, he strikes many who meet him as painfully handsome. In this way, he couldn't be less like the man he has been compared with a lot lately: Serge Gainsbourg, the big-eared, baggy-eyed, perpetually hungover hero of French pop. As the 78-year-old chanteuse and former Gainsbourg collaborator Juliette Gréco put it: ''Benjamin is beautiful. Serge was not.''

Nonetheless, Gainsbourg did manage to revolutionize the French music scene in the 1960's, taking chanson -- the song style of Edith Piaf -- and turning it into something innovative and daring. Thirty years later, Biolay has done much the same thing, with four albums in as many years -- ''Rose Kennedy,'' ''Négatif,'' ''Home'' and, out next week, ''À L'Origine'' -- that rethink French song through just about every other musical genre. Like Gainsbourg before him, Biolay styles himself as more than just a singer -- he's also a songwriter, producer and composer. The similarities don't end there. Both men had musician fathers who trained them in classical music. Both married actresses with whom they then recorded albums. And both wrote songs for others before figuring out they could sing them just as well themselves.

Music critics can't help forging supernatural links between the two, claiming that Biolay is channeling Gainsbourg and ''comes on like Serge Gainsbourg reincarnated.'' But for his part, Biolay has had enough of all the Gainsbourg talk. ''It gets tiring,'' he said, strumming a guitar and looking appropriately fatigued during a break from producing his sister Coralie Clément's second album. (A song from her first, ''Salle des Pas Perdus'' [''Room of Missteps''] was part of the soundtrack for the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton romantic comedy, ''Something's Gotta Give.'') ''One day a journalist asked me which French singer I really admired,'' Biolay continued. ''I felt pressure to come up with a name, so I said Gainsbourg. Ever since, I've been 'the next Serge Gainsbourg.' But I don't really even think I sound like him. And he was a very sad man. He was immature, very childlike in many ways. Complained a lot. And he didn't have any success until his 40's.''

In fact, the 32-year-old Biolay would just as soon not be compared with any French singers at all. ''As a kid,'' he said, ''I really didn't like most of them. The ones I did respect, like Gainsbourg, sounded more American to me than French. You could tell they didn't listen to much French music.'' As Biolay sees it, he's not really making French music. He doesn't even like French music.

France loves its auteurs (both Biolay and Gainsbourg can lay claim to the title), but not even the French can be counted on to love French pop music. Over the last two decades, the French music scene has drawn heavily on whatever it could bring in from outside: the African rhythms of Senegal's Youssou N' Dour and Mali's Salif Keita, the D.J. remixes that blended world beat with house and Euro-pop. The band Air collaborated with the 60's sweetheart Francoise Hardy and played with the synthesizer sounds of 70's rockers like Jean-Michel Jarre but then overlaid them with Pink Floyd-inspired psychedelia and ambient lounge. And Phoenix and Tahiti 80 began making effervescent, American-inflected pop that garnered cult followings in the United States.

Only recently have a handful of young singer-songwriters (Biolay among them, though he prefers not to be lumped in with the pack) started looking back to chanson itself. The songs tend toward the melodic, celebrating everyday moments and humiliations with a light sense of irony: stealing your girlfriend's handbag (''I have it. I succeeded. I proceed with the autopsy of this loyal animal, which follows her around like a little dog'') or the charms of small flaws (''Ta dyslexie est si sexy'' [''Your dyslexia is so sexy''], croons one singer). In its world-weary ennui, the music is distinct from Gainsbourg's brashly sexual double-entendres and Hardy's little-girl-lost melodies, but it is indisputably chanson.

Of the new generation, Biolay and his former partner, the Israeli-born Keren Ann, who just released a new album, ''Nolita,'' have had the most critical success in the United States. Ann could easily pass for the auburn-haired reincarnation of Hardy (with whom, incidentally, Biolay sings a duet on the coming ''À L'Origine''). Ann sings in French and English and regularly appears at Joe's Pub in New York City. Biolay produced and helped write all the songs on her well-received first album, ''La Biographie De Luka Philipsen.'' Its best-known song, ''Jardin d'Hiver'' (''Winter Garden''), a hit in France, was originally written for the jazz crooner Henri Salvador, who was a star in the 1930's. ''I've always admired Henri for writing very pretty and jazzy songs, so we sent it to him, hoping he would sing it,'' Biolay told me. ''He took so long to get back to us, we just decided to have Keren sing it. Then Henri called and said, 'J'adore!' So both of them ended up singing it on their albums.''

Salvador's ''Chambre Avec Vue'' (''Room With a View'') sold more than one million copies in Europe and includes four songs written and composed by Biolay and Ann. The album's success got them noticed, and in 2001 Biolay's debut solo album, ''Rose Kennedy,'' a musical homage to the Kennedy saga, earned rave reviews. Biolay followed it in 2003 with the darker but equally poetic ''Négatif'' (Beck is said to have had tracks from the album on his iPod) and then the dreamy ''Home,'' on which he sings with Mastroianni.

Recouped by a generation attuned to the retro groove of lounge, chanson is sexy again, at once deliciously French but not too French. Carla Bruni, the model and an ex-girlfriend of Mick Jagger, released her first album of French pop, ''Quelqu'un M'a Dit'' (''Someone Told Me''), late last year (it sold one million copies in France). The latest album from Joel Virgel, who is from Guadeloupe, included a version of Gainsbourg's ''Chanson de Slogan,'' with Virgel singing the female part in one of the pop icon's more playful duets.

At the same time, early stars of chanson like Gréco and Salvador have resurfaced, releasing their first albums of new material in years, with lyrics by the same young French songwriters who were influenced by them in the first place. There has also been a flurry of releases commemorating the genre's heavyweights: Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and, as always, Gainsbourg. Last month, ''Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg'' was rereleased with the Gainsbourg songs covered by groups like the Japanese hip-hop-influenced pop duo Cibo Matto and the self-consciously indie New York band Elysian Fields. Maybe Biolay is right: neither he, nor anyone else, is really making just French music.

Over dinner at an outdoor table in the Fifth Arrondissement in Paris, as I tried to get Biolay to talk about chanson, he played with a pack of cigarettes with ''FUMER TUE'' (''SMOKING KILLS'') emblazoned in big black letters on the front, eyed an attractive brunette who meandered past our table and finally steered the conversation toward two of his obsessions: American history and politics. He has a closetful of books about the Kennedys. He had also just finished reading Bill Clinton's autobiography, ''My Life,'' which, he joked, was just as long in French.

Lighting a cigarette (he says he wants to quit and is considering hypnosis), he talked about making ''Home.'' As Biolay tells it, he and Mastroianni conceived of the album on a drive to The Hague. Dissatisfied with the CD's they'd brought, they decided to produce a better road-trip soundtrack when they returned to Paris.

Mostly, ''Home'' is a sun-drenched album of folk-inflected, lo-fi duets, perfect for cruising through the Arizona desert. Only two songs are sung in English (''She's My Baby'' and ''A Home Is Not a Home''), but there are plenty of lyrics that need only partial translations, like ''Fume un peu de weed.'' To Biolay's annoyance, it didn't take long for critics to claim that he had found in Mastroianni his Jane Birkin. It was with Birkin, the whispery-voiced British actress who became his wife, that Gainsbourg released the scandalous (and scandalously successful) 1969 duet ''Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus.'' The song was an instant underground hit (the BBC banned it, and the Vatican denounced it). For those who knew French, the salacious lyrics made clear what Birkin's moaning did only too well on its own.

Biolay says he's not interested in scandalizing anyone, but he does have a way of turning the women in his life into musical sensations, much as Gainsbourg did for Birkin and Brigitte Bardot. Before Mastroianni worked with Biolay on ''Négatif'' (she joined him for a couple of tracks) and then on ''Home,'' her singing was relegated to the shower. Mastroianni is better known as an actress with supporting roles in offbeat films like Robert Altman's ''Prêt-à-Porter'' (in which she appeared with her father) or Delphine Gleize's ''Carnage,'' an ensemble piece about unrelated characters connected by the remains of a bull.

Then there's Biolay's younger sister, Coralie Clément, who also never expected to be a singer. Clément was hanging out with Biolay a few years ago when he asked her to sing a song he had written. ''I needed a girl to sing the lyrics just to see how it sounded, and she was there,'' Biolay said. ''So she sings, and she was good, but I didn't think much of it. When I sent the song to my distributor, they loved it, and they said that whatever I did, I should use the woman on the demo. So that's how it started. It happened by accident. It's not like I'm trying to turn every woman I care about into a singer.''

Of course, that's what Biolay would say. His style is to coolly avoid the big statement, to seem hounded when anyone tries to pin him down. The first time I saw him smile -- in the recording studio, after he made a gay joke -- I furiously scribbled ''Biolay Smiled!'' in my notepad. ''Oh, that was just a joke,'' Biolay's manager, Laurent Manganas, told me, probably worried that I was writing that Biolay is homophobic. (Which, incidentally, he's not.)

As we finished our meal, a short man wearing a straw hat and wielding a guitar approached the outdoor tables and broke into a spirited rendition of ''La Javanaise,'' a classic Gainsbourg love song. ''He's killing the song,'' Biolay told me as the old man sang off-key. Finally, as we got up to leave, Biolay gently put a few euros in the man's coat pocket. It seemed a strange choice, considering that he was butchering a French classic. ''If enough people give him money,'' Biolay explained as we left, ''then maybe he'll stop singing.''

Benjamin Biolay was born on Jan. 20, 1973, in Villefranche-sur-Saone, a small manufacturing town near Lyon in east central France. His father, a clarinetist in the local orchestra, encouraged him and his two sisters to play instruments. ''My parents basically forced me to play the violin,'' Biolay said. ''Eventually I realized that I actually really liked it, and then that I was good at it.''

At 15, Biolay was accepted to the prestigious Lyon conservatory of music and moved into an apartment with other young musicians, learning to play the trombone and winning two of the school's top awards. But his classical phase didn't last long -- soon he was watching a lot of MTV and teaching himself to play the guitar. In 1994, Biolay and the band he had formed, Mateo Gallion, released a live album. Hardly anyone noticed. He then went off on his own, writing and recording his own songs, but nothing caught on. ''I was really unhappy in my early and mid-20's,'' he told me, ''but a lot of what I wrote was really happy. It's like I was trying to make myself feel better. Apart from drugs and sex, which I did all the time, there wasn't much more that interested me. I was the kind of guy who would have a girlfriend and then three girls on the side. I was pretty transparent, though. I wasn't pretending to be anything other than what I was.''

That, he maintains, is still the case. So I tried again to get him to talk about chanson. Did he really want to be on the record saying he doesn't like most French music? (I pictured irate, Gainsbourg-loving Frenchmen overturning Citroëns outside Biolay's apartment, demanding that he apologize or move to America.)

Biolay shrugged. ''Some are O.K., really, but I'd much rather listen to the Beatles than to Gainsbourg,'' he said. And as much as Biolay wants to cast off the great man's shadow, his refusal to be lumped in with other chansonniers isn't just a pose. ''Benjamin's music is more subtle, more layered and less French-sounding,'' said Christophe Conte, a writer for the French music magazine Les Inrockuptibles. ''Benjamin really doesn't belong in the same category, but he's lumped in there because a lot of what he writes for other people has a more classic chanson sound to it.''

Much of modern chanson is playful, ironic and downright perky.

Biolay's music is often dark and moody. On his second album, ''Négatif,'' which moves from acoustic ballads to country rock to pocket symphonies and electronica, Biolay sings about suicide, nightmares and furtive back-room sex: ''I love your bitter skin, your silky skin in an iron glove. I like going into the wall, to each his own, glory hole, glory hole . . . Nothing but a dog's life, in the back rooms and basements. Glory hole, glory hole.''

Obsessed as he is with America, Biolay couldn't resist a post-9/11 song on ''Home'': ''Are you still afraid of the dark? Who do you see in the mirror? Have you had your hour of glory? What will history make of you?'' Biolay's coming release, ''À L'Origine,'' is his first foray into a real rock sound, although it still features his trademark beautiful ballads and a children's choir on four tracks.

''Benjamin is a poet,'' Juliette Gréco told me. ''His writing, his music, it's very serious, very meaningful. It's beautiful, elegant and haunting.''

Kind of like the man himself? Gréco laughed. ''Yes, exactly.''

Biolay and Mastroianni live in a big, sunny Parisian apartment littered with children's toys, CD's and books about music, culture, art and politics. ''Ignore the mess,'' Biolay said, lighting a cigarette as we sat down at the big table in the spacious living room, while his 2-year-old daughter, Anna, stumbled around, banging an empty Evian bottle on anything that might make a funny sound. ''For the last month she's been running around with the sheep at Grandmother's'' -- Deneuve's -- ''country house, so this apartment isn't really containing her,'' Biolay said. ''She's like, 'Where are the sheep?'''

Biolay also has a stepson, Milo, an outgoing 8-year-old, from a previous relationship of Mastroianni's. Milo seemed excited when I was visiting, because once I left Biolay was going to take him bowling. I didn't realize that people bowled in Paris. ''Oh, yes, we love bowling,'' Biolay said. Was Mastroianni going, too? ''Oh, no, bowling is just for the boys,'' Biolay said, smiling at Milo. Mastroianni, who wore jeans and a T-shirt and hadn't said much since I came over, concurred. ''Yes, bowling is definitely for the boys,'' she said.

Mastroianni has mostly avoided the attention of the paparazzi, who tormented her parents when she was a child. The couple say they do as few interviews as possible, although they did pose for the cover of French Elle to promote ''Home.''

''When people want to interview us, it's rarely about our work,''

Biolay told me, rolling cigarettes for Mastroianni and himself. ''Journalists won't let Chiara be her own person -- they want to write about her in relation to her parents. And they always want to make us out to be this glamorous couple.''

Biolay so dislikes being in the limelight that he doesn't even like playing live -- or at least not that much. ''He's very shy, and for a long time he didn't feel comfortable in front of a lot of people,'' Mastroianni told me. ''But now he's starting to like it. It's growing on him.''

Celebrity is also growing on him. While Biolay insists that he looks at his feet when cute girls in the subway recognize him and stare, I don't believe it. During our time together, Biolay -- in typical French male fashion -- tried to make eye contact with almost every attractive woman who walked past us on the street. ''It's really funny,'' he said as he walked me from his apartment to a cabstand. ''The moment I start to get famous, I get married. So the moment I could have sex with any girl I want, I can't.''

I gave him a poor-you look. ''Yes, I know, I have it rough,'' he said. ''But Chiara really is all I want. I'm terribly in love.''

As in love as Gainsbourg was with Birkin? Biolay smiled, said nothing and kept walking.

Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a contributing writer, last wrote about fraternities. He is beginning work on a book about addiction in America.

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Thanks for that, Biolay is my fave male French pop star actually... (which means he's still far lower ranked by me than my beloved Mylene Farmer )

Great article though--I actually didn't know too much about him. Biolay's stuff for singer Keren Ann, is really really good too.