10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (1)
And so our countdown of sexy French-singing filles ends. This is the ultimate fille. You guessed it.
1. Béatrice Martin/Coeur de Pirate
Everyone’s’ (well nearly everyone…) favourite tattooed quebecoise Québécoise with the pixie smile and bedroom eyes. There’s an overwhelming desire to wrap her up in cotton wool (or is that just me?). Then again how do you follow up your stellar debut album while breaking up with your beau? Answer – if you’re Ms Martin is to knock them dead with your sophomore offering, “Blonde”. Tougher than she looks, this one. And probably more pregnant too.
Coeur de Pirate – St Laurent
10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (2)
Though our no. 2 is from Brunette County, she’s always been candidate for the fairest of all seasons. Ah, Marina.
2. Marina Celeste
Marc Collin’s cover band project Nouvelle Vague was even a bit goofy when it started back in 2004, but the girls were pleasantly exhibitionistic, and their lounge versions of Too Drunk to Fuck or Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein were surely genius for a sweltering, if all-too ephemeral moment. Among the Nouvelle Vague filles, Marina Celeste had the most sophisticated aura, combining superchic, tendresse and a late summer sense of Mediterranean saudade – reflected and refined on her solo albums Acidulé, Cinéma Enchanté, or The Angel Pop, all about the eternal theme of „sighing sighs, holding hands“, as American songwriter Johnny Mercer put it all those years ago. At FS headquarters, everybody has a crush on Marina, and according to a British reviewer, she recently performed at East London’s Cargo club in her slip only. As if her voice weren’t enough. But you’re right: Wished we’d been there.
Marina Celeste – Le Vent dans les Voiles
FS in The Guardian
Hello dear Guardian-readers, thanks for checking out Blog Jam, and welcome to FillesSourires. We’re in the middle of counting down the 10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today, tomorrow we’ll publish the number one. Feel free to check out all the posts here, if you want to know more there’s a FAQ. In case you’re wondering if we’re really blogging since 2005, check out our old blog. Hope to see you more often!
10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (3)
The patroness, who presides with her beautiful eyes over this site, came third in our round-up of sexiest French singing girls.
3. Coralie Clément
Coralie’s first album, Salle des pas perdus, still stands as a classic. Jazzy, sultry, with touches of bossa nova and Michel Legrand-like swing. An album like a lazy Sunday afternoon, best spent on cool white sheets in the shady bedroom. Benjamin Biolay wrote and produced it all for his kid sister. CC made two more albums, the ukelele-based Toy Store and the rockin’ Bye Bye Beauté. Stand-out cd’s too, that somehow did not bring her the fame she deserves. She’s versatile, she’s beautiful, her whispering is ultra-sexy (listen to Beau Fixée), she wrote a blogpost for us (here) – she should record more. And why, Lord, are there only very short clips of these two great songs on YT?
Coralie Clément – L’ombre et la lumière
10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (4)
Countdown time for the sexiest women. Time for number 4: the girl with the gap, the former mrs. Depp.
4. Vanessa Paradis
She’ll be forty at the end of this year, #4 in this list of 10 Sexiest women in French Music Today. Today, and twenty years earlier too, we might add. Not that we consider ourselves worthy, but when a lot of women around the world got their hopes up when Johnny Depp and ‘Nessa called their relationship quits earlier this year, we certainly balled our fists. Vanessa. Ah Vanessa!
She started her carreer as a teenager with “Joe le Taxi” (actually she even started earlier), and via ‘Tandem’ (featuring what is wideley considered to be the sexiest French videoclip ever), recently peaked with ‘Divine Idylle’. She got better by the year.
A wise man once wrote: “Vanessa Paradis is just another reason for us to thank France. She has mystery and rebellion all bottled up in what looks like an innocent appearance – but that’s surely all a façade”.
Actually that makes her the ideal ‘Fille sourire’: sweet singing, sexy, mysterious, beautiful, with a certain sense of innocence, and of course very good music that gets better too. And did I mention already that little sexy gap between her teeth?
Vanessa Paradis – Irrésistiblement
10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (5)
We’re approaching #1 of our list of the ten sexiest French singing filles today. On the number 5 spot, a fiery seductress.
5. Élodie Frégé
To quote acclaimed Dutch biologist Midas Dekkers, ‘Red-haired women are the comfort par excellence for everthing that went wrong with creation.’ Look at the picture above. Don’t you want to be comforted by Élodie? If you’re not convinced yet, watch this clip from the movie Potiche, in which she plays a younger version of Cathérine Deneuve. The latter tells her husband (yep, Depardieu) that she cheated on him. Several times. Élodie re-enacts the adultery. She doesn’t speak, but boy, is her acting convincing. She’s a temptress (with an excellent voice, we might add), as this supersexy video for La Ceinture showed earlier – keep watching until the end! Heck, her third album La fille d’après-midi is all about being the girl on the side. It’s a theme we hope she will explore some more.
Elodie Frégé – La fille d’après-midi
10 Sexiest Women In French Music Today (6)
Continuing our countdown of Sexiest Women in French Music Today, we’re celebrating the Clairest of them all.
6. Claire Denamur
There are many Claires. Claire Keim, Claire Diterzi, Claire Lise. But this Claire, she’s OUR Claire. We, the writers and readers of Filles Sourires, we’ve seen her develop over the years. From the fresh-faced, upbeat neighbour’s daughter singing that she wants to frolic around in the nude, to a leather pants sporting chanteuse who dares to cover Big Mama Thornton here…
We think French singer Antoine Leonpaul said it best when he said: Oh Claire.
Claire Denamur – Le ciel
10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (7)
They are sexy and they know it. We continue our list of Sexiest Women in French Music Today with ‘Lewis Carroll’s wet dream’.
7. Alizée Bingöllu
She’s darling ultra, and she knows it. Alizée Bingöllu likes to invent herself as a cross between a wanton antiques collector and a baby pop nymph from Lewis Carroll’s wet dreams diary: Tweedledum and Tweedledee certainly never were as innocent as they seemed to be, and the same goes for Alizée and the Victorian era hokum of her band Ödland, actually a highly curious futureworld postmodernism consistently playing doctor with lovers of French music, Alizée being the nurse inserting a whole lot of strange things in those sensitive orifices. They’re called ears, of course. Her année erotique is the same as Jane B’s, only a hundred years earlier – the one of Lolita 1869.
Ödland – Les Dieux Sont Partis
10 Sexiest Women in French Music Today (8)
This blog is a mutual appreciation society. All the lovers of soft sighing, husky-voiced, French singing girls from the past and the present come together to show their love. We’re counting down our first (and maybe annual) top ten of Sexiest Woman in French Music Today.
8. Vanessa Contenay-Quinones
Maybe you think that Vanessa (who recorded earlier as Espiritu, and with her band The O’s) shamelessly adds up all the pouting platinum-blonde bombshell clichés. That her music is no more then a pastiche of lust-injected Brigitte Bardot- and Gillian Hills-hits. Then you obviously never saw her dj, or play live. V, as her fans refer to her, outsmarts you easily with her in-depth knowledge of (French) 60s pop (become her Facebook-friend, and you’ll see). She’s really into this music. And if you, like a few members of the Voting Committee did, saw her up close in a very tight, very red dress and very high heels, then you know that a description like ‘the sweet seduction on high heels with the beautiful, sultry voice and misty eyes’ is more than apt. This woman was créa by the Dieu of Cool.
Vanessa & the O’s – Charlie Charlie