French Eurovision Entry to be sung in English
The French 2008 Eurovision Song Contest entry by Sébastien Tellier - “Divine” - will be sung in English. Gorgeous. Here is the official clip.
The BBC report it thus:
A French MP has said he is outraged that the song chosen to represent the nation in the Eurovision song contest has English lyrics.
Jacques Myard, of the UMP party, has urged the company that runs most of France’s TV networks to reconsider.
Sebastien Tellier’s entry, entitled Divine, combines both English and French lyrics with electro music.
France’s culture minister has defended the song, saying the country should fully support his bid for victory.
(In passing I love the idea of a Party who exist to have the ‘UMP - they have beaten all sorts of people to the draw on that one: Yorkshire, Roy Hattersley, Mr Gordon himself … it goes on). Perhaps someone will start the ‘arrumph party.
This is what the Telegraph says, in regrettably unamusing and balanced fashion:
Defenders of the French language were furious yesterday after it emerged that the country’s entry for this year’s Eurovision song contest will be performed in English.
Sebastién Tellier, a hirsute singer-songwriter with a penchant for cream suits, was selected by France 3, the state television channel, to perform his electro-pop track Divine at the annual contest, held this year in Belgrade on May 24.
A “Colonel from Little-Twistleton-under-Piddle foaming at the mouth” opportunity missed.
Pity.
Wrapping Up
It seems to me that Sébastien Tellier is a clean-cut version of Animal (cf: Muppets) in sunglasses without the drums. Good luck to him.
Tags: france 2008 eurovision, animal, muppets, sebastian tellier, divine
Categories: All WW, Arts / Culture, News - Current Affairs, Video
We’re very upset by this story and we’ve been thinking what we can do.
The head of the French Eurovision delegation, Bruno Berberes, defended the choice, saying “French just doesn’t work for this sort of electro”.
What does he mean?!!!
We, The Ex-men, two British boys, have decided to come to the rescue. We originally recorded the French version of our song, Wordcage (Cage de mots), as the theme for a French TV pilot but, if France asks us, we are willing to donate the song as the French entry for Eurovision 2008. We are even, if President Sarkozy and the French people want, prepared to perform it in Belgrade.
Please help us in our defence of quality pop in French and contact Bruno Berberes to campaign for our song at bberberes@aol.com
Listen to the French version of our song at http://www.myspace.com/theexmen
or view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWng4G4rs3Y
Thank you for your help at this difficult time for the French language.
Matt and Jack
The Ex-men
http://www.myspace.com/theexmen
Jack
Good stunt. Delighted to support you on it.
But your site doesn’t half crash a lot of web browsers - it took out both IE and Firefox for me.
Matt
Yeah, don’t know what to do about that Matt - any ideas?
The only way is the hard way. Strip out everything and add them back one by one - that way you’ll find where the problem is.
Personally I’d suggest Wordpress as a core site + outlier sites on Wordpress, Facebook wtc , but you probably don’t want to hear that - and the myspace ecosystem may be important.
But if you’re killing FF and IE all the time you’re missing 90% of your traffic anyway.
I suppose you could start in a new account, and add in the stuff you have on there gradually - that way you will find the problem (hopefully) and then be able to rebuild your existing site quickly, rather than experimenting with the live one.
[...] this week I reported that some of the French are in a tizzy because their entry for the Eurovision song contest is in English. We have a new [...]