‘L’album de sa vie’ by Alain Bashung, a new 3CD compilation, brings together the major tracks from one of the most hit-filled repertoires in French rock music. ‘L’album de sa vie’ (What a life!) thus begins with “Gaby Oh Gaby,” the spark that ignited the singer's career at the dawn of the 1980s, before retracing the journey of this multifaceted, popular, and demanding artist through some forty memorable tracks.
A final CD, dedicated to the numerous covers that Bashung interspersed throughout his career, also shows the breadth of inspiration (from Léo Ferré to Manset, from Elvis to Leonard Cohen) that fueled this unique body of work. This thirty-year overview highlights his sense of immortal melody ("Vertiges de l’amour," "Osez Joséphine," "Madame rêve," "La nuit je mens"), his sharp musical turns, his powerful, singular voice, and his penchant for poetic nonsense, cultivated in collaboration with exceptional lyricists (Boris Bergman, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean Fauque…), which now constitutes a language in its own right.
A Miraculous Unreleased Track
But the big surprise of this new anthology is the presence of an unreleased track, “On n’a pas l’air…,” dating from 1981, which was exhumed and mixed forty years later by Mitch Olivier, the sound engineer from the original sessions. It features echoes of the ska of the era through a playful saxophone and a bluesy harmonica, reflecting Bashung’s fidelity to his foundational influences, while the guitars and rhythm subtly foreshadow the future. An essential and miraculous discovery.
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