Quote:
Originally Posted by Shepherd
Watching Alizee perform in this 2001 video makes me think she would have been a huge hit in the USA even though she couldn't speak English. Her charm and stage presence would have blown America away. She would have pickup enough fans to carry her 5th album into profitability. I wonder why she never played America?
http://ok.ru/video/348935686700
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I think we discussed 'part' of this topic not too long ago. Mylene came out with 3 English versions of her songs around the same time. This was probably at least an attempt to get more deeply into the market in the U.K. and other European countries that had a lot of English speaking people, but might have been an attempt to at least test the waters in the U.S. MF took Youpido, J'en ai marre, and J'ai pas vingt ans and came up with English versions but she didn't do a good job of it. It was said they were laughed (I believe Alizee said that in an interview) and if she had tried to perform them in this country, I'm sure the critics would have been all over her. With that failure, at that point in time, it ruined her chances to try and appear in this country.
Then Amelie came along which had an excellent English version that I'm sure would have done well here , but at that point, she had apparently made her decision to split from MF/LB.
You are right that her charm and her stage presence would have blown away people in this country. I remember when I first found out about her back in 2007, I put together a video dvd of her performances and brought into work one day. I played it on a morning when everyone used to like to watch music videos on tv and I put it on without telling everyone what it was and they were giving me a hard time when I started this but then for the next few hours as they watched it over and over again, nobody could take their eyes off that screen. When I went home, I left it for them to keep watching and I had a few complaints the next day because someone had taken the disc home with them, but I had plenty more.
The one thing that hurt in time them sustaining their watching her was her lack of good English songs.
EDIT: I have to add that whenever Alizee has done well, I've sung her highest praises and when she's done poorly, she's heard it loud and clear from me and I have to say that if MF had done a good job of translating jam, jpva, and youpidou, then after her En Concert tour, performed the exact same concert in New York, singing these 3 English songs instead of the French ones, along with the English version of Amelie, maybe only changing the order of the songs to at least start off with an English song, I think she would've been an overnight sensation. The combination of MF/LB songs, her voice, her beauty, her dancing and her charm would've taken this country by storm. All the ingredients were there for an incredible show, but it just wasn't to be. I kind of wonder how she would've felt on stage in NY? Would she have been as sure of herself as she was in Europe or would she have been tentative and nervous as she appeared to be in Korea?