Alizée-Blonde
Album review.
Blonde presents a clear divergence from Alizée’s previous works, evoking none of her early Mylène Farmer-era nymphette gamine Lolita image, and little of her more sombre, emotion-driven ballads in 5 or the Edie-Sedgewick inspired Une enfant du siècle. Blonde, instead, is more synthpop than house, more Daft Punk than Chanson Française.
None of this comes as a particular surprise for those familiar with the Queen of Europop’s obsession with reinventing herself and evolving both her art and her image, though, I must say that what did surprise me is that the Album was considered a commercial failure and was poorly received by critics. While the échec of Une enfant du siècle was a shock to no one considering Alizée’s seeming disinterest in the entire project, Blonde feels and sounds like she was actually enjoying herself recording and, in turn, I enjoy listening to it, as should anyone.
The overall musical tone of the album is incredibly similar to Kavinsky’s 2022 Studio Album Reborn, to the point that that I genuinely believe that Blonde must have been his main inspiration for his work. Considering that he’s French, it’s not impossible, and the similarities between the structure and tone of Blonde’s tracks K.O., Alcaline, Seulement pour te plaire, and L’amour renfort, among others, to Reborn’s songs Trigger, Zenith, and Reborn are so strong as to almost evoke suspicion.
Of course, the titular Blonde is a charming, funky song about blondes, especially those who have dyed their hair to be so, and the stereotypical image that they present as ditzy “Barbies”, while maintaining a surprisingly clever message deconstructing this stereotype, both by mentioning various artists who have been blonde at some point, such as David Bowie and Brigitte Bardot, and highlighting (pun not intended) that some blondes, like Alizée at the time, are in fact brunettes. “Fais tes comptes, il y a combien des brunes sous les blondes?” (Have a look, how many brunettes are among the blondes?)
Blonde leads into the deceptively calmly-paced K.O., a song that metaphorizes a relationship, perhaps an argument, between a woman and a man as a boxing match, with the woman clearly holding the advantage. I think it could serve as the basis for a good Lo-fi remix, but beyond that is little more than a filler track.
We move on to the truly excellent “Alcaline”, the absolute highlight of the album, who’s deliciously syrupy synth tones strongly evokes Daft Punk and Julian Casablancas’ Instant Crush while clearly retaining the strong individual identity of Alizée. I adore this song, and it absolutely merited its rerelease as a single. Within the chorus you can almost hear hints of Carpenter brut, or even shades of the Eurodance remixes of the early 2000s, and it’s an excellent synthwave/synthpop song in it’s own right.
Seulement pour te plaire follows on, a strong addition which is unfortunately eclipsed by its positioning in the tracklist, coming right after the album’s real hit. That said, Seulement pour te plaire does merit attention by virtue of its deceptively melancholy lyrics, about insecurity, told from the perspective of a woman who wishes she were able to reinvent herself and be more beautiful for her lover, hidden behind a catchy beat.
The next song, L’amour renfort, meanwhile, is a perfectly enjoyable love song that is, however, not particularly avant-garde either in melody or lyrical content, and frankly feels unnecessary in the context of the rest of the album.
Next, we unfortunately encounter Bi, an inoffensive yet painfully clunky song about how we should all just love who we want and phobia and prejudice is bad. It’s sweet in intention, but feels out of place not just in the album but in Alizée’s discography as a whole, especially with the a chorus that starts with the jarring “Des préjugés, des phobies” (Prejudices, phobias) that always makes me wonder if she’s celebrating them or standing against them. Again, not a terrible song, just out of place, and, if Alizée felt like it was time to take a political stand, writing a song about Bisexuals-who really no one is interested in-was a slightly weak place to start. I suppose that one must remember this was 2014, where these things were considered a little more avant-garde.
Following Bi, we move onto Mon Planeur, the song perhaps most akin to Alizée’s previous work in this album, which, bar the snare drum, could almost fit as a filler track into 5, or at a stretch, even Mes courants electriques, with a note of that album’s track Tempête, albeit with less melancholy and a far more consistent pace. Unfortunately, Mon Planeur doesn’t have Tempête’s highs and lows, and it doesn’t have the depth of emotion found in 5 necessary to really leave a mark.
Tweet, is our next song, a cheerful-sounding little ballad that has a surprisingly prescient and slightly sad tone, though, considering that the album is now twelve years old, though, like all of Alizée’s work, it manages not to feel dated. Tweet is a sort of tragi-comedy, poking fun at the way we behave toward the internet and lamenting the fact that “tweeting” has replaced things we used to do, such as writing love letters, which last forever, while tweeting only lasts a moment. The song also holds a hint of desperation, asking for a little more time to enjoy those sweet moments of happiness and love, seemingly before it’s all swallowed by the encroaching… well, tweeting, though you can easily view this as being more about social media in general. Tweet has a genuine message, and I think it’s worth a listen if only to hear that lovely chorus, exhorting us to focus on what matters to us in the real world.
We move then onto Charles est stone, a play on Charleston, which confusingly has the main line from Megalovania as a backing tune, giving the song an overall arcade-y feel. It comes across as a dance number through and through, the sort you’d drunkenly shake to towards the end of a night out, where the chorus is of more importance than the rest of the song.
After this, we find our penultimate song, Mylène Farmer. Now, for those who don’t realise, Mylène Farmer, a pop legend in her own right and one of the best-selling French singers of all time, is the woman who, as it were, discovered Alizée during her Graines de star performance in 1999 and, along with composer Laurent Bouttonat, brought her into the limelight and elevated her into stardom with the hit albums Gourmandises and Mes courants électriques. After these successes, Alizée split from Mylène Farmer, by all accounts amicably, to launch a solo career, which has of course been immensely successful, though some fans and critics believe that she should have continued her collaboration with Farmer.
In the years since their creative split, various sites published hacky theories and pieces on the breakup, and in the time since their collaboration ended there have been various claims as to what “caused” it, going off the idea that it wasn’t as amicable as it is presented. I think it’s only fair to take Alizée’s word on the whole situation and, considering that she has continued to congratulate Mylène on her birthdays and dedicated Mylène Farmer to her, saying, “I just want Mylène to know that my love for her has not faded...”, I think it’s safe to assume that their friendship remains.
Now with that context out of the way, let’s examine the actual song. Mylène Farmer is a song about a young woman who feels under pressure from her presumed lover to live up to impossible standards, to be secretive and animalistic, intelligent while keeping her mouth shut, mother, mistress, woman, being exactly who he wants while remaining mysterious. It’s a portrait of someone who feels inadequate, and, the chorus explains who it is she compares herself to, namely Mylène Farmer herself, portrayed as a perfect woman, coveted by the song’s unnamed, overdemanding male figure.
I’ve seen some claim that there’s a sense of bitterness in the song and, while I won’t entirely deny it, I don’t believe that, if there is any, it’s directed at Mylène herself, especially considering that Farmer was the first person notified about the song by Alizée before she released Blonde. It’s a surprisingly personal song considering the rest of the album, with a theme more akin to the deeply emotion-driven content of 5. On it’s own, it’s a good song, themed around the experiences of women and the struggles they face to live up to expectations, but, with the added personal depth to it, it’s a stand out piece of the album.
And, finally, we reach Plus de bye-bye, an exit, both to the album and, considering Alizée’s as-of-yet indefinite hiatus from producing new music, a exit number to her overall music career. The lyrics talk of how her life has changed with her new partner, who, in this case, is her husband Grégoire Lyonnet, and how her life is now about her marriage, her love, and the sun and wind.
“Bye bye
Plus de bye bye non
Que des retrouvailles, des fiançailles, des “je viens te chercher”
Bye bye
Plus de bye bye non
Que des retrouvailles en gros, en détail et synchronisées”
She sings the words with genuine joy, and what sounds like elation. I think there’s some melancholy there, too, albeit perhaps only on my part. It’s an achingly pretty song and quite frankly would serve very well as the last one she ever releases, much as I hope that that’s not the case. The song has a melody that could go on forever, and it does feel surprisingly final when it ends, so pulled in are you to the musical equivalent of a sunny evening walk on the beach. It’s a self reflection on the way her life has changed, the way that she has changed, and that she’s deeply, deeply happy with all of it. Something we could learn from that, to reach towards, to hope to reach one day.
Blonde is, I think, an overall picture of Alizée as she is today. Happy, trying new things, and comfortable with her past and her future. She’s grown as an artist and as a woman in those short years since she first reached stardom, and I think that is what this album is about. Not the new experiences and experiments of Psychédélices, not the heartbreaks and changes of 5, but Alizée herself, how she chooses to be. It’s worth listening to in it’s entirety, even if some songs clearly standout more than the others, just to hear Alizée as, I believe, she wants to be heard.
“Ma vie a changée tout comme mes tatouages
En couleur, toi tu me donne des gages”
Alizée-Blonde, released 23rd of June 2014.