Alizée Article Translations by me

[Future Raptor Ace]

yeah haha I bet he wishes he could turn back time. I say we all shank him for hurting Alizee, whose with me? Let me see your war face you call that a war face? LOL

[Amelie]

Originally Posted by garçoncanadien

What is your favourite perfume?

"Angel", by Thierry Mugler.

I have and use "Angel" too isn't that cool? btw, it was the greatest article about Alizée ever. her normal day make-up is exactly like mine. that's really cool. only difference that i use much more of lipstick because my lips are damn dry so i have no choice.

MERCI GarçonCanadien!

[lilly]

Originally Posted by garçoncanadien

Has anybody ever broken your heart?

Yes, when I was a teenager. Fortunately, it was nothing serious, and I lived my life normally.

I think this is a job for the "Lilly Town Amigos". What say we take care of this
guy!??!

Or maybe not coz he prolly might have killed himself for being such an idiot!lol

[bergy]

i would like to thank you for this translation and artical we need more to be up to date on thinks quote i dont speek french but love alizze

[garçoncanadien]

Originally Posted by RMJ

Scan from unknown magazine by Sebastien.

2008-04-30 - ???

I want to give you a big kiss

The thirty or so winners of the contest in Le Republicain Lorrain - Direct FM met yesterday in the Snowhall of Amneville around an Alizee who was radiant and very accessible.

The warm room of the Snowhall of Amneville had a great meeting yesterday. Its referring to the singer Alizee and her fans who had the chance to win their place after a contest organised by the Republicain Lorrain and Direct FM. Coming as a family or among friends, everybody had a certain feverishness in the few minutes before the arrival of the ex lolita. For Elizabeth, 17 years old, from Briey, it was a dream come true: "I follow her from the start, from Moi...Lolita! Everything that she does is super, her music is genius and her last album Psychedelices is the best of them all. We can say that I am a real fan, I can't pass up an opportunity to listen to Alizee. I had the chance to see her in concert in the Galaxie of Amneville but I didn't think that I would have the chance to see her one day. I prepared lots of questions for her, there are so many things that I want to know!".

Among the adolescents and the little girls who made up the majority of the group, some boys, more spiffy, took their places on the Savoy Swiss log cabin style sofas. Mika, 23 years old, from Metz admits "I fell in love musically when she released her second album in 2003; I fell in love with the song J'en ai marre. I already liked lots of Mylene Farmer music, so liking Alizee, naturally flowed.

Ankle boots and a leather jacket

Stars have a habit of making people wait but Alizee very professionally arrived right on time, with healthy applause. Ankle boots on the feet, a hippie cool little dark pink shirt and a black leather jacket, Mademoiselle Juliette arrived to answer questions. It felt suddenly very stuffy around the dumbstruck audience, who was able to see up close and personal someone whom they usually admire from behind a TV set. "Go ahead, I don't bite.", she says, to let the atmosphere relax a bit.

The most courageous got right into it: "When will be be able to see your new clip?", "15th of May if all goes well.". "And for the tour, have you chosen a date?", "Yes, it will start on the 23rd of October. I don't know if that will happen nearby but it would be a great pleasure for me. I like the Amneville site a lot, I always take some time to get myself relaxed in the Thermes after the concerts... and sometimes even before". The exchanges happened in a relaxed manner, which even let the young ones get over their shyness. Morgane, 8 years old, from Courcelles-Chaussy asks "Will you sing us a song?". "No, not today, Alizee answers her with a big smile. But on stage I will sing extracts from my three albums". "So we will go and see you!" The little girl answers, brimming with enthusiasm. "Do you have another question?" The singer asks. "No, but I wanna give you a big kiss!" Done as soon as it was said. Alizee prepared herself with a lot of generosity and kindness with the kissing game, photos, and autographs.

Some fans offered her candy or roses, but its her who gave the best gift: a unique moment with their idol.

Alizee met yesterday the readers of RL in the snowhall of Amneville.

TRADUCTION PAR GARCONCANADIEN

[forgot_86]

Aww, Thanx a Lot garcon! That has to be the best thing I've read this week! Made up my day, Alizée is very very sweet and kind. Now my desire to see her upclose is burning even more! Anyway, congrats to those lucky kids, I envy them a lot

[SilentFox]

Thanks there garçoncanadien! its nice to read some good news on a day like today for me

[Sir Wood]

Merci Garçoncanadien ! More reading materials for the plane.

[garçoncanadien]

BIOGRAPHY

Alizée

Twenty Thirty

At 24 years of age, Alizée has no less than 4 albums to her name, including one free Psychédélices, freed and liberator. From the incarnation of the Lolita to her musical flowering, lets go back to the phenomenal path of the really young girl who has already had 1000 lives.

Ephemerides (GC’s note: this is a table of astronomical data)

It’s about winds that take one far, much further than the thoughts of the young girl. It’s also about names that predict fantastic destinations, and predestined first names. That of Alizée only announced a periodic breeze on “Made in France” pop, but definitely aroused a hurricane of an opinion. In 2000, at the release of her first album Gourmandises, most of the media, up to date with the word of the day, defined the wave of Alizée as a fresh wind on the world cleaned of songs for romantic and spotty teenagers. It was without doubt that the video “Moi…Lolita” would go much further than French recreation centres and would touch a public of all ages, all styles, and all acquaintances, fascinated by this young genius Corsican singer, singing melodies that are wily, suave, and ambivalent. For Alizée, it was time to have fun and to experience the media hurricane: An explosive single and an album given multiple awards, and then a second work that kept the ball going and quickly breaking across borders. The braids of a young apprentice (GC’s note: a Star Wars reference to Jedi Knights), she got them courageously through self-sacrifice to the Farmer school, the toughest of them all.

But, with the majority helping, the winds took the singer to new shores, that conform more closely to her own tastes, of a young woman who is mature and responsible. It was necessary to get away from appearances. The trade winds are not spring-like refreshing sea sprays that one imagines, but dry winds from intertropical regions, that upon the arrival of the summer, will disappear into the Indian Ocean and the Sea of China. Alizée is no longer a vinyl puppet of Mylene Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat. With words with double meaning and irresistible melodies, she slid shamelessly into the big costume that was made for her, between Nabokov and Gainsbourg, and became despite all that a symbol of French pop that is half-detached, half-depraved. Now, Alizée changes and frees herself, like those before her: Shirley Temple, Petula Clark, France Gall, Lio, Vanessa Paradis, Charlotte Gainsbourg… and Sabine Paturel (Note from editor: remember, the girl who only made mistakes). No, she is not the heir of Marie-José Neuville, the “College student of singing” who sang in the 1950’s “the little pests”, surprised before “the Mr. of metro” and was not against “A little walk in the forest”. If the young girl had to compose something between what she was and what she sang, the raw 2008 of Alizée doesn’t work. With Psychédélices, the singer tries to be, instead of being an incarnation. The weather is looking good, under the sign of independence. Nobody is surprised when the story starts on the foothills of the Corsican scrubhills…

An island…

Its in the heart of 1984, as soon as the July vacationers have gone back home, on the 21st of August, that a new islander called Alizée was born in Ajaccio. First child of the Jacotey couple, the legend says that she got her name from her father Joseph’s great interest in nature, the sea, and aquatic sports (Editors note: and particularly windsurfing). At almost 50, this passionate photographer since adolescence, who shows himself today superbly by the pseudonym of Getchell, by opening his own internet site, where he shows his talents through lots of common photos, with particular attention towards seascapes, scenes of ports, and views of surfers. When Alizée gave her first cries, it is a triumphant Jeanne Mas who is on the top of the charts with “First time”, a song that she wrote with Romano Musumarra with music from Roberto Zaneli. Still, a serious rival appeared in March 1984 with a little tortured nursery rhyme, sung in a wispy voice and accompanied by a troubling clip. This new singer found nothing more rejoicing than to lend her pseudonym to an American actor from the 1940s, who frequents psychiatric hospitals, concentration refuges, electro –shock therapy, and other treatments. The song is called “Maman a tort” (Mom is wrong), the singer is called Mylene Farmer and Alizée, who didn’t know how to talk yet, knew even less what role this woman was going to play in her existence. During this time, France Gall belted out “Debranche” (Disconnect) and “Hong Kong Star” and delivers some of the most delicate texts of Michel Berger like “J’ai besoin de vous” (I need you) and “Cézanne peint” (Cézanne paints). Axel Bauer sings “Cargo” dressed in leather in a sweaty, manly environment full of machines. Renaud, Goldman and Dutronc each add their own stone to the musical building of the year, the first in inaugurating the Zenith of Paris, the second in getting a platinum disc for Positif and the last in letting come out of his hat a elegant irreverence to virulent humor and a bit crappy with “Shit in France”. In November 1984, the Top 50 were born. Without knowing it, destiny would forever link the Ajaccio baby and the celebrated classification.

Alizée’s childhood is sweet and happy. Her father is an IT specialist and her mother is a storekeeper in a leather shop. Could there ever be such a gene for craziness for bags?!)

Alizée’s childhood is sweet and happy. Her father is an IT specialist and her mother is a storekeeper in a leather shop (Editors note: could there ever have happened, by the strangest of coincidences, such a gene for craziness for bags?!). From the age of 4, Alizée went to the Ajaccio Dance Center of Monique Mufraggi. After several years of service as a choreographer and a professor in several associations and for the municipal club of music and dance, this artist made her own school in the beginning of the 1980s. When Alizée joined the ranks of the centre in 1988, the reputation of the school was already excellent. Monique and her students had already won several contests, in both Corsica and continental France, have produced several first class stars in the 80s and received several prizes during the Lions of Gold of Dance in Nice. After having started in Ajaccio under the tutelage of Mrs Roussel, and then being perfected by madame Vigneau of the Oran opera, Monique quickly got interested in all aspects of dance by working just as well with Mrs Singer and Bosset of the Paris Opera, Mrs Cagneau of the Marseille Opera, as with Laurent Biancotto, Serge Piers, Alice and Sylvie Kay, Moise Kengbo, Thierry Godefroy and Stephane Locci of the Rheda group. Made strong from learning from these multiple teachers, she founded a dance school where the students are invited to avoid blinkers and taste everything, from modern jazz to clapperboard dancing while passing by flamenco, rock, tango, waltz, latin dance… and even a recent addition, tecktonik. For her first year, Alizée entertained herself with an initiation into modern jazz and classical dance. The young girl familiarized herself with the gestures thanks to roleplaying and to apprenticeship of the rhythm of French songs of the Fatherland and of English hits. From then, she discovered a true passion for dance. Monique Mufraggi, a privileged witness of the young girls first artistic steps confides to us that “Alizée had a sharp sense of rhythm and danced with much expression. She quickly got her first role when she was 5, that of the wolf in The Little Red Riding Hood, A role much more difficult than the others because it needed terrifying expression, a supple but complex animal gesture, quite the opposite of the choreographic knowledge of the other kids.”

From there, Alizée worked hard on her classes and made her first steps on stage participating in all the shows of the center. Some snapshots from the period immortalize her as a ballerina in a tutu, adolescent in rollers, leader of a clapperboard dance group or a flamenco dancer. She plays the gala games at the end of the year, bringing to each unique table nice costumes needing a second degree that only childhood allows. One year, among her disguised sidekicks in Village People, one wearing a construction worker hard hat, the other wearing a cow boy outfit, yet another wearing a revolutionary costume dating from the Madonna period American Life, Alizée chooses simplicity and outfits herself as a sailor, with a striped sea blue and white pullover. In November 1989, she and her friends perform the first part of the singing tour of Patrick Fiori, a child of the country, who, without being a star, is on the way to becoming an established kid in the pop music scene of the island. In 1990, Alizée continues to explore her talents as a dancer on stage, and must find another place to perform. In fact, the Jacotey family is growing up and the young girl has the joy of welcoming a little brother, called Johann. The infant is made to continuously listen to Madonna, Alizée’s favourite artist, as well as the more classical tastes of his father, an LP enthusiast who listens to “Let it be” from the Beatles and Beethoven symphonies.

…and wings

In 1995, Joseph Jacotey, having blind confidence in the infinite imagination of his kids, proposes to them to participate in a contest

INTERVIEW

Oxmo
Puccino

THE AUTHOR OF “DECOLLAGE” AND “PAR LES PAUPIERES”

When he put his pen to work on two songs of Alizée’s disc, Oxmo offered a style. Much more than a cautious hip-hop.

A connected person could say that there is a rift beween Alizée and Kool Shen, your duettist on “Un flingue et des roses” (Gun and roses) in 2004, no?

From that perspective, definitely [smile]! But when Jeremy Chatelain contacted me, due to the friend-friend relationship, I didn’t know who he was. I don’t look at TV and I had never heard of him. We met at Republique, in Paris. I thought he was cool and he explained to me why Alizée wanted to work with me. We met again and got more serious about things. He knew my first album Opéra Puccino. He wanted to give a particular colour to a song lyric and knew that we could do something good together. As for me, I didn’t worry about what Alizée did before this disc. She made me listen to a bit of urban music. The sound was just about complete. The melody was already there, the arrangements were done and there were even some voices. So I wrote “Décollage” (Take-off) and it was recorded.

How did you coach Alizée to learn this flow that was not natural for her?

Her singing impressed me. Even if you truly wrote from the heart, if the singer just puts a part of her heart into it, the whole piece is only the part of the heart. All artists are not as concentrated as she is, in studio. Many lust after a song or are looking for a signature act. Not her. I was extremely disappointed by some of her colleagues, who at the exact moment of getting to work, forget their cute talk and are not quite as good as what they want. With Alizée, none of that! She wanted to ensure that the piece reached exactly what we imagined it to be. To see an artist give herself the means to talk the talk and walk towards her artistic ambitions is rare. What we talked about since the first models has not changed one bit. What was said was exactly what was done. I liked this business.

Was it known ahead of time that you would work on a second lyric?

Right from the beginning, there wasn’t even a question whether or not we were only going to do a single song. Because everything went well with “Décollage” (Takeoff), we recorded “Par les paupières” (By the eyelids). This bit was created with such particular conditions that I was made to discover another part of myself. I found out that urgency is the mother of creativity. It was a last minute title, completely improvised. It was written and recorded in one day, and ended at 3 in the morning. If the situation didn’t drive me into a corner, I think this piece would never have been born.

Did Alizée tell you to write songs about certain themes?

For “Décollage” we had time to discuss the subject and the text is quite precise. Looking back, “Par les paupières” was written under stress, fatigue, and rain. I just came back from concert, totally exhausted. I threw blocks of words on paper, spontaneously, without rereading them. As soon as I was happy, I kept them. The piece was recorded before we were able to put everything together. They are different in the method of writing as well as the form. Where “Décollage” is lively, almost a club song, “Par les paupières” brings a feeling, a sense, an atmosphere, and it will probably stay in the mind longer because it is timeless.

When you committed yourself to working with Alizée, you flirted with pop. What relationship do you maintain with singing since your retakes of “Ces gens-là” (Those people) on the compilation Hip Hopée in 2000, “Je suis une bande des jeunes” (I am a gang of youngsters) on Hexagone 2001 (GC’s note: Hexagone is slang for France) and more recently “J’en déduis que je t’aime” (I deduce that I love you) by Aznvour on France Inter?

I learned to open myself to other styles of music. Even if the work back when I was starting was very hip-hop, I very quickly made myself stand out with texts on kids, mothers, and friends. I expressed through hip-hop subjects that usually only pop got into, like “L’enfant seul” (The Lonely Kid), “Alias Jon Smoke” or “Le jour où tu partiras” (The day where you leave) with K-Reen. I started to listen to much more varied styles of music with my second album, L’amour est mort (Love is dead). I grew up listening to Renaud and Brel. To redo them was the right thing and a way of opening a blocked door, even if it wasn’t really closed. At the time, rappers were nothing. Collaborating with pop artists, it was unthinkable since there was such animosity on both sides. Now, it is natural for me to work with Alizée, Ben Ricour, or Grand Corps Malade.

You discovered jazz with Step in the arena of Gang Starr. Do you think that while working on Psychedélices, you give Alizée’s audience a need to discover Oxmo?

I hope that they want to know me more. For the time being, I am writing my next album about time and pleasure. I want to distance myself from ambient pessimism and instill some positivism in my tour this autumn. I am working to explore art that really hits the mark, the mixture of words, flows and verses. My number one priority is to find new things, feel pleasure and allow pleasure to be felt too.

Oxmo Puccino, Lipopette Bar
(Blue Note /EMI)
and La reconciliation (Label Rouge Prod)

[continuation of article]

of drawing organized by AOM, a French airline that was founded four years ago and has gone under since. Objective of the game, called “Draw me a plane” in a Saint-Exupéry style outburst (GC’s note: this is a very famous French author): make a sketch of a plane and colour the cabin, the design of the winning candidate will be reproduced on a real plane of the AOM fleet. Just by chance, Alizée just completed reading Petit Prince of the aviator/writer. Inspired by the fairy tale for big kids, poetic-philosophic allegory, the young girl coloured her design with a deep blue and sprinkled the cabin of her air bird becoming a night bird, with a moon, planets and stars with golden and orange colours. Some months later, she finds out that she won the contest, chosen from some 6 000 young Picassos. Like promised, her ideas were retained completely to paint an MD-83, one of AOMs planes that flies towards the Dom-Tom. Alizée and her family were invited on the inaugural voyage and happily participated in the media photoshoot covering this event destined to make Marc Rochet’s company known, a direct competitor from Air Inter in this 90’s market. Before the camera or on the wings of a plane, Alizée is with the angels and is not intimidated by this media attention towards her. Smiling with her parents – an elegant mother with a suit and white pants and a relaxed papa in jeans and a Camargue shirt (GC’s note: Camargue is a location in France) -, she holds her brothers hand, to reassure him in the face of the photographers. Johann has a t shirt labeled Tintin et Milou and by a strange coincidence, it’s the singer of “Comme Tintin”, Chantal Goya, who finds herself being the godmother of this great promotional event. If Alizée poses voluntarily with the ineffable singer of “Bécassine”, “Bouba”, “C’est guignol”, and other “Pandi-Panda”, she wins above all a trip to the destination of her choice. So, the whole family flew to the Maldives Archipelago. The news quickly went around the dance school and the Centre for Dance, and when she came back, Alizée didn’t hesitate to share her souvenirs with photographs. With pictures filling her mind, she peacefully retold the story of her life.

Alizée won’t delay her 11th birthday party. She is at the point where people still play Cowboys and Indians. In addition to being an emeritus professor, Monique Mufraggi is a child of cabaret. Her parents owned the cabaret Le Bonaparte in post-war Morocco, where they welcomed flamenco orchestras, jazz groups like Glenn Miller, Los Machucambos or Charles Aznavour. Since the creation of the school, Monique wished to create shows that reunited elements of traditional cabaret: comedy, dance and music. Well before the Parisian success of the play Notre Dame de Paris, she juggled her own creations and more classical repertoire. 1995 was, on this point, a year of all kinds of happiness. In the summer Alizée participated in Carmen of Bizet choreographed by Mr Alvarado with the Opera of Draguignan, on the scene of the theatre of greenery of Casone at the foot of the statue of Napoleon, on the heights of Ajaccio. Thanks to unfailing dedication, the little girl also got the title role of the show at the end of the year dedicated to Pocahontas. The director remembers that for each show, she got her students, from the intermediate level and up, to propose dance moves for the ballet: “The most deserving got their names written on the program of the gala and Alizée excelled at this exercise. As soon as she knew the chosen theme, she researched the texts, taught herself the music, looked at films, cartoons or videos on shows that had similar themes and the next week, she came to class having knowledge about the scenario and the melodies on her fingertips. She thus transformed herself into a little director, knowing how to give dynamic energy to her group, who for the most part, followed her like a bunch of lemmings. She prepared her original choreography in top secret and to keep the surprise, didn’t reveal anything until the last moment, and definitely didn’t reveal the costumes, it sufficed to her to use plain dress during the rehearsals!”

If one sang?

Strong from success that she won from representation, Monique Mufraggi feels the winds turning and went against the trend while making shows at the crossroads of multiple disciplines (GCs note: using expertise from multiple disciplines), at the speed of three creations per year since the middle of the 1990s. In 1996, she invited the singer Eric Choley to participate in her shows. A student of Jasmine Roy and Armande Altai, a member of the Ajaccio Estudiantina (Editors note: a local musical and folklore group), he became a crucial link of the teaching team in making a singing studio in the center, renamed for the occasion The School of Theater Performance. At 12 years of age, seeing her school diversifying by adding singing and acting lessons, Alizée decides to follow new courses. From then, she participates in all the spectacles created by the school as a singer, dancer, and an actor. In 1997, she goes on stage in a show founded on the songs of the boy band Alliage, and then revisits the classics of Starmania and West Side Story, and sings several hits during a show called Cocktail de tubes (Cocktail of the TV shows). In “Un drôle de magician d’Oz” (A funny wizard of Oz) in June 1997, Alizée plays the role of Judy Garland and depicts a Dorothy that is more true than the real one. The show is a great success, mixing singing, acting, classical dance, jazz, clapperboard, and flamenco… Monique had taken the liberty to replace the clown monkeys of the Sorcerer of the West by wild gypsies throwing bad lots.

The next year, the school proposes an original creation, Le Château de Varnemont, (The Mansion of Varnemont), a fantastic story of a ghost pirate who makes a martyr of the people on vacation living in an old mansion. “Like certain other gifted students, Alizée had several roles in the show, her professor remembers, including commander of the army of the ghosts. Juggling between dance, singing, and sketching, she came to the set in a costume of the living dead that made by herself that would even make Michael Jackson jealous!” During this time, its without great pomp that Alizée gets her license and enters into second year classes at Fesch High School, just a few steps from her old college. The evidence is clear: Miss Alizée wants to become a choreographer and wants to stop her studies to dedicate herself completely to her passion. She completely gave herself again to the gala in June 1999, in the paintings made around Corsican, Celtic, Iberian, and African legends. A scene of Irish folklore, choreographed like Lord of the Dance, was a crowd pleaser for both the crowd and the parents.

The young one grows

On the advice of her singing professor Eric Choley (Editors note: who also will coach Florian Lesca, unhappy candidate of the “Nouvelle Star” (GCs note: New Star, a TV show similar to American Idol), dropped out in May 2006, some weeks before the victory of the celebrated Christophe Willem) and of those around her, she signed up for the selection process of the show “Graines de star”. Hosted by Laurent Boyer, friend of the stars and king of intimate interviews thanks to “Frequenstar”, this TV hook has become an unavoidable show since February 1996 on Friday evenings. The music industry has profoundly changed, the artistic directors of this end of the century don’t anymore bet on long careers, instead focusing on marketing blitzes and not daring to work on development. So, TV takes the places of the decision makers of the past, skims the regions and picks up the talents of tomorrow that will feed the Dream Machine. In November 1999, the casting team of the show went to Ajaccio. Alizée wants to compete in the category “Graines de danseuse” (Seeds of dancers), but because of a late registration, she was forced to give that up. Because of choices and rules, she decides to try her chances as a singer, and shows up in an Ajaccio discotheque to audition. The wait feels like forever, but supported by her mother, the young girl ends by singing at 3am “La vie ne m’apprend rien”, (Life doesn’t teach me anything), a retake of the regrettable Dnaiel Balavoine. Against all expectations, Alizée got second place in these regional auditions. Just like her colleague Jenifer, an unhappy candidate in 1997 but future icon of the “Star Academy”, or of Gregory Lemarchal a few weeks before her, Alizée is about to enter into the big family of artists discovered by M6 when the radio waves are occupied by the big voices (Johnny Hallyday, Celine Dion, Notre Dame de Paris, Tina Arena…).

A few days before Christmas, she was invited to the capital to do her first studio work in order to prepare the song that she will sing live in the show a few weeks later. On the 16th of December 1999, Alizée finds herself for the first time in front of a microphone in a Parisian recording studio. She chose to do “Waiting for Tonight”, an effective dance song from Jennifer Lopez and released during exam week for a month day after day before these voice tests. The objective of this trial was to work on her tessitura and choose the song that she will sing live on the day of the show. A camera was installed in a corner of the studio, filming her jump into the giant bathtub. Alizée seems to be at ease, she gives her name, age, says that she has been singing for two years and does some galas every year in Corsica. And the she bursts into song:

[Fixty Sixty]

Fabulous article! It shows how hard Alizée has worked to develop her performing skills, and her dedication to excellence. This is a good article to go with the Fun TV interview. Thanks very much for the translation.