Minor music genres are often dominated by one or two acts only. The general public buys mostly Pop / Rock / Urban albums and then go on with Bob Marley (Reggae), Miles Davis (Jazz), ABBA (Disco), Shakira (Spanish language) or Andrea Bocelli (Opera) to fulfill their low demand on each minor genre. From mid-90s, Andre Rieu cleverly took that spot for Classical genre, selling it to the masses.
.jpg)
Florent Pagny 1988 debut single, N’Importe Quoi, was a near-million seller peaking at #1 for eight weeks. His first three albums yet all failed the Top 10 and none sold enough to reach Platinum (300,000) status. The compilation summarizing those releases sold well over a million in 1995 yet. With 1997 release Savoir Aimer, question was either or not Pagny would be able to shift bucket loads with a studio album or if the compilation was a one-off.
En Passant literally means “by the way”. This is exactly how Jean-Jacques Goldman achieves new million sellers, effortlessly, just like that. This 1997 album was no exception.
North against South, Paris against Marseille, PSG against OM, NTM against IAM. During the 90s, both sides of France have been pretty much opposed in every possible way. In music as a whole or in the rap universe specifically, IAM was the obvious flagship of Marseille city artists.
Unlike one may though when reading Era name, Era isn’t a band but instead a musical project fully created by French musical composer Eric Lévi, responsible of several major French movies soundtracks including Les Visiteurs, the biggest theater success in over 20 years at the time.
Impressively, Titanic remains the most successful movie of all-time in France with almost 22 million persons seeing it on theaters. This is especially incredible considering how View More
Folk / Rock band Louise Attaque band name was given as a tribute to Violent Femmes band, of which the leader produced Louise Attaque‘s self-titled debut album. Released in 1997, this minorrelease went on to become the bestselling Rock album of all-time.
Getting the highest selling album in a calendar of all-time in 1995 (with D’Eux) was already a unique achievement. Getting three albums inside the Top 10 Year End chart of 1996 was just as spectacular. One may guess how anticipated Celine Dion 1997 major release Let’s Talk About Love was. We won’t even mention the artist was soon to be massively hyped thanks to her Titanic soundtrack signature song.
In Deep confirmed the widespread appeal of Tina Arena in her home country Australia a few years after her initial breakthrough with Don’t Ask. This gave her the opportunity to record a couple of French songs and add them on In Deep tracklist in France, a reissue dropped in October 1998, over one year after the first release.
