Wizzz 5

Wizzz is a series of albums that features fairly obscure French yeye-pop and psych from the 60s and 70s. On the newest edition, there are two quite great female sung contributions. Annie Girardot was an actress (150 films!) who sang incidentally. This track is from the movie Erotissimo, a film about a housewife who feels left out when everything around her talks about, and shows sex. It features Serge Gainsbourg. See a clip here.

The story of the song Zoé began when Pierre Dorsay, artistic director at Vogue Records, asked Swiss singer and musician Pierre Alain to write a song for a new female singer. The inspiration came when he realized that Zoé (the artist’s name) was also the name of France’s first atomic battery, created in 1948, which consisted of uranium oxide immersed in heavy water! The lyrics reflect a bubbling energy that must be handled with caution, while the instrumentation echoes this atomic theme, notably with the use of a theremin.
Zoé’s career lasted only as long as a single 45 RPM, but it seems Christine Fontane was the vocalist behind this pseudonym, who is known for several EPs, a good “popcorn” album in 1964, and a handful of children’s singles in the ’70s. Regardless, the photograph on the cover is of a different girl entirely.