Misc. Alizée Questions!

[LeFantôme]

Originally Posted by robertrhein

My question is why did I not discover Alizee before now?

Do you live in America? Well there you go. Anglophone countries are xenophobic when it comes to foreign languages.

Originally Posted by Roman

in the past we found a word to describe Alizée perfectly, unfortunately for clarity and the ability to convey meaning to the uninitiated, the word was simply Alizée.

Hahahaha

[VVVACCPLPNLY]

Not all anglophone countries are xenophobic to foreign languages. The UK supported her, at least for the early era. But they rejected Psych.

[babyblue558]

Originally Posted by VVVACCPLPNLY

Not all anglophone countries are xenophobic to foreign languages. The UK supported her, at least for the early era. But they rejected Psych.

Moi... Lolita is still actually the last song in another language to make the top ten in the UK, which is really something for Alizée to be proud of, but after that, everyone here sorta forgot about her. I think she performed L'Alizé in England once but it didn't get into the charts. When I ask somebody who was into pop music at the time ML was kicking about, I usually find that they recognise the tune but have no idea whatsoever of the name of the song or who sung it. It's so frustrating- how can you forget someone as special as Alizée?! I guess people over here just saw her as a novelty that they quickly got bored of... I don't know whether you can call that true support.

On a different subject, I'd be very grateful if somebody could clear something up for me. For the early years at least, Alizée nearly always lipsynched on TV performances. I've heard several reasons as to why this might be, bur I've seen no solid proof as to which is correct:

1) It's just the way things are done in France. Alizée was under an obligation to lipsynch on French TV by the makers of the programmes she performed on. I agree, this one sounds a bit improbable, but it's the answer I see most oftern on Youtube. It would explain that one time she sang live with no lipsynching on TotP in Italy, and why various other French singers at the time used lipsynching on TV.

2) It was Mylène's decision for Alizée to lipsynch her performances. Again, I have no idea whether Mylène had this power as her producer or why she would enforce this rule, but this is another explanation I've heard more than a few times on Youtube. It would explain why she's started singing over a recorded track or just singing live in her recent performances since the split from Mylène.

3) It was entirely Alizée's decision to lipsynch in these early years. Maybe the most likely out of the 3 as I see it, but I can only speculate why she would choose to do so; she has a lovely voice when singing live.

Please could someone with knowledge of this matter confirm which (if any!) of these 3 is correct?
Thaanks

[wasabi622]

Originally Posted by babyblue558

Moi... Lolita is still actually the last song in another language to make the top ten in the UK, which is really something for Alizée to be proud of, but after that, everyone here sorta forgot about her. I think she performed L'Alizé in England once but it didn't get into the charts. When I ask somebody who was into pop music at the time ML was kicking about, I usually find that they recognise the tune but have no idea whatsoever of the name of the song or who sung it. It's so frustrating- how can you forget someone as special as Alizée?! I guess people over here just saw her as a novelty that they quickly got bored of... I don't know whether you can call that true support.

On a different subject, I'd be very grateful if somebody could clear something up for me. For the early years at least, Alizée nearly always lipsynched on TV performances. I've heard several reasons as to why this might be, bur I've seen no solid proof as to which is correct:

1) It's just the way things are done in France. Alizée was under an obligation to lipsynch on French TV by the makers of the programmes she performed on. I agree, this one sounds a bit improbable, but it's the answer I see most oftern on Youtube. It would explain that one time she sang live with no lipsynching on TotP in Italy, and why various other French singers at the time used lipsynching on TV.

2) It was Mylène's decision for Alizée to lipsynch her performances. Again, I have no idea whether Mylène had this power as her producer or why she would enforce this rule, but this is another explanation I've heard more than a few times on Youtube. It would explain why she's started singing over a recorded track or just singing live in her recent performances since the split from Mylène.

3) It was entirely Alizée's decision to lipsynch in these early years. Maybe the most likely out of the 3 as I see it, but I can only speculate why she would choose to do so; she has a lovely voice when singing live.

Please could someone with knowledge of this matter confirm which (if any!) of these 3 is correct?
Thaanks

Well from what she said in one of the billions of interviews I've seen, she says she lipsynched because it was difficult to sing and dance at the same time.

Though obviously, she does sing live and dance as well.

[babyblue558]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

Well from what she said in one of the billions of interviews I've seen, she says she lipsynched because it was difficult to sing and dance at the same time.

Though obviously, she does sing live and dance as well.

That's very true and hadn't occurred to me but it only applies to about 1/2 of her songs. OK, for songs like JEAM and JPVA the dancing is well worth it , so then what about songs like Parler Tout Bas where she just sits on a stool and sings? She pulled of a completely flawless performance of that song in En Concert so it's not as if she can't do it.

Originally Posted by wasabi622

Well from what she said in one of the billions of interviews I've seen, she says she lipsynched because it was difficult to sing and dance at the same time.

Though obviously, she does sing live and dance as well.

Considering the fact that control on breath is most important factor while singing , it becomes more difficult while dancing along with singing.

Many artist do lip-syncing and it goes like this only. She did sing live in some of her performances. Generally it's ok. It gets weird only when there is a mistake. Like in Generation 90, the song was playing even when her lips were still. In one of her performance in old days, the song was playing even after she left.

She did very well at En Concert. She sang live and those were one of best performances.

Now she doesn't dance much so she can try to sing live. But it's still not that much easy. It requires lot of practice and training. Without that it would be awful. If she practices hard for it, then maybe she can do so in her shows in future.

[Fall]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

Well from what she said in one of the billions of interviews I've seen, she says she lipsynched because it was difficult to sing and dance at the same time.

Though obviously, she does sing live and dance as well.

I think this is probably the reason as well. Singing and dancing at the same time is really difficult. One will get in the way of the other unless you practice like crazy. And I don't think a performance on a show is worth it. Probably the only time one should do this is for a single, big performance or perhaps a tour where you have a lot of time for rehearsals.

[babyblue558]

OK get what you're all saying about singing and dancing at the same time (it's a fair point), but quite a few of her songs (ML, L'Alizé etc) require little or no dancing, but she still lipsynchs? If I was somebody as vocally talented as Alizée I'd want to show it off during such performances, so it makes no sense for her to lipsynch in these performances in addition to the ones that involve lots of dancing.

[lefty12357]

I think the reason for the lip-syncing is because that's the way they prefer to do it on TV in France. By prerecording the artists they can make sure they have a good, quality performance with no mistakes. It also insures the best sound quality for the broadcast. And yes, if an artist wants to do a more complex dance routine, they can without sacrificing singing or sound quality.

[Roman]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

Well from what she said in one of the billions of interviews I've seen, she says she lipsynched because it was difficult to sing and dance at the same time.
Though obviously, she does sing live and dance as well.

Oh really? I don't remember her ever directly addressing that. Let me know if you remember where you saw that.

And yes, it might be especially in France that it's common as she and others did it even in special multi-artist concerts like Aix-en-Provence in 2008. But, in general it is often done on tv and has been for a very long time. I remember reading something about Jerry Lee Lewis almost not being allowed to perform on some tv show because he insisted on singing live and they wanted him to perform to a playback. That was what, the 1950s? Having said that, I have seen occasions on French tv where at least some part was done live, maybe just to toss some sense of authenticity in there. By the way, they are generally actually singing I think, it's just that the vocal level is dropped out to allow the pre-recorded playback to come to the top. There are also occasions like at Café Picouly where Jenifer did a bit of a cappella as I recall. So, if the person is a really good live singer and confident about it, you are more likely to sometimes see some live singing.

Having said all of that, it seemed that Alizée was singing everything live in Mexico and for all the argument about it being hard to sing and move around at the same time, she seemed to have no trouble. She wasn't dancing exactly, but she was sort of bouncing around a lot and stuff. Though I think she has a bit of trouble with "projection" and maybe that's why she did that raising the pitch at the end thing. I guess it's not as simple as turning up the mic and so maybe in the studio it's easier because 1) the singer can focus on the minutia of the sound and 2) there is no ambient noise. And 3) it depends on the song. Some songs can be belted out and fine control is not much of an issue. Some songs benefit from the careful concentrated studio environment. And 4) as a person who has done a certain amount of singing in my time, I can tell you that some days are just better than others. Some days I have felt like I just have a magical power to create resonance and have a lot of control with little effort. Other days I feel hardly able to croak out anything. I think the situation improves with a lot of regular training of the voice. But of course 5) natural instinctive nervousness can ruin all of that (ironically enough one does poorly for the very reason of being afraid of doing poorly).