French Pop History

  Christmas, 1961. The rock 'n' roll wave that had finally broken over France the previous year had gone from strength to strength and the onset of twist-mania at the end of the year had helped to cement its place in the French musical firmament - even parents were happy to get out on the dancefloor to do the twist. The yé-yé explosion was just around the corner. Everywhere, it seemed that the new teenage music was in the ascendant. Everywhere except, so far, the world of Christmas music. Christmas in France was synonymous with Tino Rossi, a star since the thirties whose 1946 festival offering "Petit Papa Noël" had been a hit not just that year but every year since, making the transition from 78 to EP without even pausing for breath. The biggest commercial success of Rossi's career and the biggest selling French record ever, it was (and is) to the French what Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" was (and is) to Americans - inescapable, ever-present and in...

"  American singer April March once famously claimed that  yé-yé was the best music that there is, which might be overstating it although there is no denying the music's considerable appeal. For all that though, there is considerable debate about what yé-yé actually is - a problem compounded by the fact that the term has become decidedly elastic over time. There are plenty of things that  yé-yé is not - a mix of French chanson with rock 'n' roll, for example. Strictly speaking,  yé-yé is not even uniquely French - there were  yé-yé singers in other French speaking countries such as Belgium, Switzerland and - to a lesser extent - Canada, and a healthy  yé-yé scene developed in Spain as well. Nor is  yé-yé an exclusively, or even mainly, female phenomenon; there were plenty of male yé-yé singers too, from Richard Anthony and even Johnny Hallyday on through Frank Alamo and Hervé Vilard to lesser-known but still worthy names such as Jamy Olivier ...