In honor of French electropop outfit Lulu Van Trapp’s show at The Rockwell on Sunday (see “Hit this” below), I present a few highs and lows in the history of French pop music – a real mixed bag.
The highs of early and mid-20th century French pop in the “chanson” mode (think Édith Piaf) were as high as you could hope for. The best of these ballads combine memorable melodies and pithy lyrics, greeting the tumult of two world wars with a combination of elegance, Gallic pride and resilience.
But after the best of that era? Mostly trash for decades.
When rock ’n’ roll broke loose in America and the U.K. in the ’50s and ’60s, France looked on from the sidelines, unsure how to enter the fray. Whatever cultural seed and soil was required to grow your own cutting-edge pop music, the French didn’t have it. Instead, Gallic pop went through an intense period of derivative knock-offery.
Recommended reading: a marvelously awful listicle titled “Classic ‘French Songs’ that are Actually Ripped-off English Tunes,” compiled by Charli James. Find it online to watch some brutal French thefts of popular songs such as Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” and The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.”
The real kick in the pants was how popular these ripoffs became. Instead of serving as gateways to discovering the real thing, lovable French charlatans such as Hugues Aufray and Johnny Hallyday made a killing by repackaging what already existed in better versions for French listeners who didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, any better.
Disco is often looked upon as a period of creative stagnation in music. Maybe so in America. But in France the disco era heralded a slackening of ripoff rock ’n’ rollers, which we can all be grateful for. Into the void stepped a club-centered music culture that became so dominant that it was hard to imagine a popular French song in any other subgenre – rock, pop, blues, folk – that wasn’t going to be remixed into an extended dancehall version. Like light sucked into an all-powerful black hole, club music was king and all popular French genres bowed before it.
Aside from the occasional alt-rock outlier such as Phoenix, club music is still king in France. The pop charts are full of toe-tapping yet forgettable techno bangers. Once in a while, though, the scene gifts us gems such as Daft Punk. Whatever happened to Daft Punk?
That’s about all you need to know about French pop. Tune in next week for a scurrilous and dismissive take on the Germans.
Hit this
Sunday: Lulu Van Trapp (The Rockwell, Somerville)
The Parisian electropop outfit Lulu Van Trapp comes to Davis Square. The band is touring the United States for the first time ever. What a time to tour abroad! Visa applications are getting rejected left and right. So be thankful whenever an artist is able to sneak past the armed checkpoints. Like most French pop, Lulu Van Trapp has a touch of the discotheque to their sound. But their pedigree and live performance trends a bit grungier. These are club kids who grew up with thumping techno beats, but they love their guitars too. Opener Baby Baby Explores is a genius pairing, a postpunk Rhode Island trio that dabbles in danceable cabaret, art school loft-style.
Sept. 18: Mary Halvorson: Amaryllis (Regattabar, Cambridge)
Jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson’s show has a subtitle, “Amaryllis,” which is the name of an album she released in 2023. Not “Cloudward,” released in 2024. And not “About Ghosts,” released in June of this year, which would be the natural LP to highlight on tour three months later for all the usual promotional and marketing reasons. So to reach back into the old/not-old catalog to showcase “Amaryllis” feels like a very intentional move. At the time of its release, the album represented Halvorson’s most ambitious studio work, leaning on the largest ensemble she had worked with and pushing beyond the boundaries of classical jazz into more experimental territory. Kind of sets the bar high for the live performance. Walter Smith and Logan Richardson join the late show.
Sept. 19: Sharp Pins (Lilypad, Cambridge)
Sharp Pins named its latest album “Balloon Balloon Balloon.” You can’t say that chief songwriter and string puller behind the scenes Kai Slater doesn’t have a sense of humor. The indie rock band sounds like Big Star fed through a beat-up transistor radio. Don’t sweat the fidelity, just dig on the hummable melodies, which come fast and frequent. The band has released three full-length albums in 2025 via K Records. That’s a lot no matter how you slice it. And they seem to be selling, so legendary label impresario Calvin Johnson must be enjoying himself. If you miss this show at The Lilypad, travel to Washington, D.C., to see them play a few days later at Comet Ping Pong, the pizza joint that QAnon truthers thought was Hillary Clinton’s private sex dungeon. Maybe they still do?
Live: Willie Fest 3 at Warehouse XI
Somerville mayoral candidate Willie Burnley Jr. gathered around himself a progressive party of partiers at the third and final installment of the Willie Fest series (“Hot Willie Summer”) Sept. 3 at Warehouse XI. The arts- and music-focused celebrations were intended to draw attention to his candidacy while championing the local community of creatives. Mission accomplished.
Pop rockers The New Noise kicked off the evening’s entertainment. The quartet announced they were trotting out some new material. Though it was unclear whether one of the livelier numbers, which included the lyrical catchphrase “all my friends are dead,” was a cover or original. The notion is frequent fodder for pop inspiration. Sebastian Bach, Lil Uzi Vert, Turbonegro and the Amity Affliction have penned songs with the same or similar title. The New Noise is contributing to a rich tradition.
Fans of My Chemical Romance tuned in for My Chemical Chungus, a cover band devoted to the emo rockers out of New Jersey. Not all cover bands make the extra effort to dress up, but the lead vocalist was admirably bedecked in the black, goth-charged bandleader uniform that fans are familiar with from the “Welcome to the Black Parade” video. Epaulets and all.
A “chungus” is an “overweight, giant, Earth-destroying, god-killing rabbit” by the way.
See You at Rogers closed out the music bill with a medley of pop-punk burners. The five-piece also had some new songs to showcase. A new EP’s worth of material, in fact. But you’ll have to wait for a yet-to-be-listed EP release show at O’Brien’s Pub in October to hear the new album all the way through. We heard only a few nuggets at Willie Fest 3.
Three is a magic number. The third installment of any trilogy is when you can reasonably expect some sort of closure. But there’s no closure until the votes are counted, and Somervillians still have the preliminary (Tuesday) and general (Nov. 4) elections ahead of them. It’s almost time for an electoral gut check to see if the people are picking up what Burnley is putting down about affordability, inclusivity and how to kill all these – to paraphrase Charlton Heston – “damn dirty rats.”
People around here love to talk about killing rats. It’s a real source of community.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
A stronger
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