In his liner notes to Silva America's compilation of female-sung French pop songs of the 1960s, Swinging Mademoiselles: Groovy French Sounds from the 60s, Peter Compton, writing of the "yé-yé" movement that responded to American and British pop of the era, writes that "
Sylvie Vartan,
Françoise Hardy,
Sheila, and
France Gall were the biggest stars of the genre...." None of those singers appear on this collection, which instead features 18 selections by 14 lesser-known names. They are, however, uniformly winning, whether they are attempting to rock out, as
Jacqueline Taieb does on the album-opening "7 Heures du Matin," when she approximates the stutter of
Roger Daltrey and the nonsense syllables of
Little Richard, or settling for catchy pop, as Christine Pilzer does on the 1920s-style "Cafe Creme." Rock tends to take a back seat to projections of personality and feminine verve on these tracks, notably Elizabeth's cocky and kooky "Je Suis Sublime," which recounts a sort of "My Favorite Things" list of what she considers life's joys, all of which add up to make her the sublime person she is. But there are some light rockers, such as Clothilde's "Et Moi, et Toi, et Soie" and Liz Brady's tongue-twisting "Palladium (The Hip)." The British influence is overt in two songs brought across the English Channel, "Je Suis la Tigresse," Delphine Desyeux's take on
Lulu's U.K. hit "I'm a Tiger," and "Plus Tard," Katy David's French translation of "Call Me," originally recorded by
Petula Clark, herself a mainstay of the French charts. But the overall enjoyment provided by the collection is somewhat dampened by the lack of real stars, as well as by the sometimes iffy sound quality. Oddly for what appears to be a legitimate licensing project, the tracks seem to have been mastered from old records, and pops and crackles are audible on several of them. ~ William Ruhlmann