French Ye-Ye Pop Playlist

French Ye-Ye Pop Playlist

     Bonjour Smos heads. Thanks for reading. I just wanted to follow up my Godard Mon Amour post with a full on Ye-Ye playlist. For those who don't know. Ye-Ye is a French musical genre from the 60s named after girls who sing "Yeah-Yeah" in their bubblegum pop lyrics. Most of the lyrical content is very wholesome and innocent. Teen dream pop was like that back in the day. Today, we basically traded that sensibility for dark and moody teenage angst. Which is fine too. But this music is from a bygone era that my parents were a part of. So that nostalgia has passed down onto me.

The Dreamers got me back into Francoise Hardy in 2004, but it wasn't until (oddly enough) Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (part of Grindhouse) in 2007 that got me into Ye-Ye. I had heard April March's Chick Habit during the end credits of Death Proof and I was immediately transfixed by the mod retro poppy melody that soothed my eardrums. I did some research when I got home and downloaded the soundtrack and subsequently bought it on vinyl. But the revelation that Chick Habit was an American translation and cover of France Gall's Laisse Tomber Le Filles is what opened a whole new musical world to me. I looked up her songs on YouTube and kept clicking the recommendations on the sidebar to hear the likes of Sylvie Vartan, Gillian Hills, Annie Philippe, etc. Needless to say, I had discovered a new musical obsession.

So enjoy my playlist of groovy French Ye-Ye pop, guys and gals!