HB/LB Mini #5
Publishing on a Monday, total random vibes 🤪
Bonjour hiii,
I’ve got a little amuse-bouche for you today. And yes, that is indeed more French. What can I say? They quite famously make some nice stuff over there. And I just couldn’t fit all the cool, weird, and messed up French stuff in the last issue. So here are a few quick hits of culture en Français that I just couldn’t bear to skip.
But first, I want to take a quick moment to say THANK YOU for your readership, it means a LOT — HB/LB is currently sitting at just under 950 subscribers (wowee zowee!! truly, thank you!), and I feel like if everyone who has read this far can think of one person to send this newsletter to, we could hit those 4-digits, baby! Come on! Let’s get this bread!
#1 Polo & Pan
No one gets me feeling like Lindsay Lohan dancing in Mykonos faster than the lounge-y, electro-tropicale grooves of Polo & Pan. Their discography is quite stacked, but I keep returning to Canopée. It’s just a killer groove for chiller dudes — there’s no other way to describe it! Plus, if you want to feel like you’re taking a journey through a hand-painted Portuguese plate (a pretty universal feeling, I don’t think I need to explain myself further), don’t miss their music video.
#2 Yseult
Christophe Willem isn’t the only diva to have emerged from Nouvelle Star. Singer Yseult placed second in her season, but has since made some very first place moves. She has a Tiny Desk. She performed at the 2024 Olympics Closing Ceremony. She dropped one of the HARDEST videos of last year. She can kind of do it all: rock, pop, R&B, power ballad. And if I don’t get an absolute barrage of Yseult projects in the coming years, I will take action*.
*Write about it in my journal in a frustrated tone.
#3 L’Impératrice
L’Impératrice’s music makes me feel like a cool girl. Like, who me? Enjoying multi-lingual, indie, disco-leaning electro-pop? That’s only my jambon et fromage (a very common French idiom I’ve just made up). They do seem to be going through a bit of drama at the moment, with the lead singer recently leaving and being replaced and all… but not everyone is bound to get along like foie and gras, I suppose.
#4 Serge Gainsbourg
Oh, Serge. That little fucker. (I don’t think I’m out of line calling him that, I feel pretty confident that he’d agree). Has a French-er man ever existed? In 1973, he released a song whose lyrics roughly translates to “I came to let you know I’m leaving and your tears won’t change a thing,” with sounds of his then-girlfriend Jane Birkin’s sobs spliced in for dramatic effect (LOL). And then, years later, in a televised tribute to his career, a boy’s choir, styled to look like the old Frenchman — sunglasses, 5-o-clock shadow, cigarettes, whiskey, the whole shebang — performed a version of the song for Gainsbourg. And let me tell ya, the man is fighting for his life in this broadcast. Absolutely failing to hold back tears through puffs of a cigarette. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
#5 Alizée
Oof, okay. Hear me out with this one. Sometimes, when you’re in the 4th grade, you fall in love with a song that you revisit in your 30s because you’re just craving that early 2000s euro-pop sound and you vaguely remember that one song you heard at an elementary school dance that went extremely hard and you go, “Oh yeah, what was that song called again?” So you google around until you find it and you’re like… shit. Because you see that the title is “Moi… Lolita,” and you watch the music video, and while the themes and imagery and subject matter make your stomach turn, that hook still makes your little ass shake. Damn. Those French freaks. They got you, yet again.
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Ok, that’s it! Merci! See you in the next one! French kisses! 😛😛😛😛😛😛
xoxo,
Simone