Friday's French music break - Florent Pagny and Pascal Obispo "Je laisse le temps faire"

It's two for the price of one this week as Friday's French music break is actually a duet with Florent Pagny joined by Pascal Obispo in "Je laisse le temps faire".

Pascal Obispo (left) and Florent Pagny (screenshot from official clip)

And even if there were no lyrics to the song you would probably be able to tell from the opening bars that it was French.

It's the accordion that gives it away; not an instrument that features regularly in French pop songs, although if you're a lover of Bal-musette you might beg to differ.

Pagny, now 49, released his first album back in 1990 and since then has tried just about every musical (and hair) style.

They (musically-speaking) have included (among others) the dreadful faux-opera "Baryton" album, one dedicated entirely to Jacques Brel songs - "Pagny chante Brel" (he should have known better) and most recently "Tout et son contraire".

But his biggest - and arguably best - songs have come from the pen of Obispo.

It's not the first time the two men have worked together - far from it.

They go back a fair number of years and Obispo, along with his longtime songwriting partner Lionel Florence, has provided a fair number of songs for Pagny including his biggest hit to date, "Savoir aimer" in 1997 and the cleverly catchy "Ma Liberté de penser" in 2003.

In fact Obispo has been a prolific singer-songwriter since the 1980s, recording songs himself such as "L'important c'est d'aimer" (1999), "Millésime" (2001) and "Fan" (2004), a tribute to Michel Polnareff, that have become firm favourites with not just the French but other artists too - given the number of times they've been covered.

The 46-year-old has also written for a host of other singers including Calogero, Johnny Hallyday, Patricia Kaas, and Canadians Natasha St Pier and Garou.

His 2000 hit musical" Les Dix Commandements" (music by Obispo and lyrics by Florence, and Patrice Guirao) spawned several hits including "L'envie d'aimer" sung by Daniel Levi and Yael Naïm's "L.I.B.R.E".

Prolific, as you can probably tell, is something of an understatement when it comes to Obispo, and what's the betting that his new musical, "Adam et Eve, la seconde chance" won't also spin off a hit or two when it opens in January 2012.

In fact the first track from the show "Rien ne se finit" by Thierry Amiel and Cylia is already getting plenty of airplay.

Anyway that has given you some background to the two men.

You can check out Pagny's official website and (an unofficial) one dedicated to Obispo for more info. They're both in French.

In English there are also the rather incomplete Wikipedia entries for the two men: Pagny and Obispo.

And finally there's an excellent biography on Pagny on the Radio France Internationale site, which also includes a little info on Obispo.

For now though, here they both are performing "Je laisse le temps faire" a jolly boozy breeze of a number. HEY!

Yael Naïm wins Best Female Artist at France's Victoires de la musique awards

Tuesday evening saw part two of Les Victoires de la musique awards, the French equivalent of the Grammys, broadcast live from Paris on France 2.

"Part two" because, in their infinite wisdom, organisers decided viewers probably weren't up for several hours of tra-la-la-ing and thank you speeches to all and sundry and split the ceremony in two.

Yael Naïm (screenshot from YouTube video)

February 9 was dedicated solely to newcomers and "revelations" with the public getting to vote in each category and the whole shebang being broadcast live from the northern city of Lille on France 2's (much) smaller sister station France 4.

Meanwhile Tuesday saw awards handed out to the "more established" artists with industry professionals getting to determine who got what.

Of course the voting procedure is more complex than that; but by and large the heavyweight awards were decided by those "in the know" who had already whittled the nominees in each category down to four and, apart from the Song of the Year which was left to a public vote, determined who got the gongs.

Perhaps the most interesting category of the evening was that of Best Female Artist because it had, in a real sense, a truly international flavour to it.

Added to that, there were some stunning performances although only three of the nominees were present.

Canadian Cœur de pirate (otherwise known as Béatrice Martin when she's not performing) who won the award in 2010 for Best Song gave a simple voice and piano rendition of "Francis" from her self-titled 2009 album.

Nigerian-French singer-songwriter Aṣa (pronounced Asha), trademark big specs and velvet timbre of a voice, treated the audience and viewers to a groovy "Be my man" taken from her 2010 album "Beautiful imperfection".



And French-Israeli singer-songwriter Yael Naïm added a touch of soul and jazz as well as a heap of gospel to her pop-folk rock "Come home" from her "She was a boy" album.

Phew!

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Only Vanessa Paradis - French model-actress-singer and partner of Johnny Depp (or should that be the other way round?) was missing.

Perhaps she had guessed she wouldn't be picking up an award this time around but she already has a heap of them to her name.

And the winner is...Yael Naïm.

In the night's other categories awards were picked up by Gaëtan Roussel for both Best Male Artist and Best Album, M (full name Matthieu Chedid) and veteran Eddy Mitchell jointly for best concert/show/tour and Philippe Katerine (love him or hate him) for his splendidly as-usual off-the-wall "La banane" as Best Video.



The last award for Best Song - and the only one on the night left to the public vote - went to "Je veux" by Zaz.

As Paris Match said, "A lively evening and a long way from the seemingly interminable hours of poorly paced entertainment" viewers were subjected to last year.