Victoires de la Musique 2018 nominations

Details have been released of the nominations for the 2018 Victoires de la Musique awards, the French music awards that can be compared to the Brit awards or the Grammys.

It's a big annual event, a high profile showcase for French music, and it always gets significant media coverage. It also, significantly, focuses on French acts. This year sees the 33rd edition of the Victoires de la Musique awards.

As is all to often the case with this kind of event, there are few surprises, but as always, the breakthough artist and breakthough album categories are the ones that interest this blog the most. Nice to see Fishbach and Petit Biscuit get some recognition. Events and awards like this can give major exposure to developing artists, introducing them to a farn wider audience and help them take their careers to a new level. It wasn't that long ago that Christine and the Queens were playing at small festivals and in nightclub sized venues.

Orelsan leads the nomination, with three mentions - best male artist, best urban album for La fête est finie and best video (or best audiovisual presentation, as it likes to be called by friends) for Basic.

There are two nominations each for Louane (best female artist and best original song) and for BigFlo & Oli (best urban music album and best original song.)

Best male artist
Bernard Lavilliers
Orelsan
Soprano

Best female artist
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Louane
Catherine Ringer

Breakthrough artist
Eddy De Pretto
Gaël Faye
Fishbach

Breakthrough album
Aliose - Comme on respire
Juliette Armanet - Petite amie
Petit biscuit - Présence

Best chanson album
Brigitte - Nues
Albin de la Simone - L'un de nous
MC Solaar - Géopoétique

Best rock album
BB Brunes - Puzzle
Lady Sir - Accidentally Yours
Shaka Ponk - The Evol

Best urban music album
BigFlo & Oli - La vraie vie
Lomepal - Flip
Orelsan - La fête est finie

Best world music album
Amadou et Mariam - La confusion
M - Toumani et Sidiki Diabaté - Lamomali
Oumou Sangare - Mogoya

Best electro album
ALB - Deux
Dominique Dalcan - "empérance
Fakear - Karmaprena

Best concert
Camille
Gérard Depardieu - Gérard Depardieu chante Barbara
Julien Doré - & Tour

Best audiovisual creation
Orelsan - Basique (Greg & Lio)
Gauvain Sers - Pourvu (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
The Blaze - Territory (Jonathan et Guillaume Alric)

Best original song
Dommage by BigFlo & Oli
Ton mec by Kyo
Si t'étais là by Louane
Roule by  Soprano

I'll give more on my thoughts about who the likely winners are going to be closer to the actual event.

The 2018 Victoires de la Musique ceremony takes place at la Seine Musicale on Friday February 9.

Michel Sardou: Sardou et nous

While the compilation album of younger artists performing the work of Johnny Hallyday is attracting  huge amount of attention and subsequent sales, there's also a similar work looking at the career of Michel Sardou, entitled Sardou et Nous.

Sardou, who is 70, recently announced that he intends to retire from performing and recording after a career in music and film that has lasted over 50 years/

His recently released album Le choix du fou has been a massive seller in France where his popularity over the decades has withstood changes in fashion and style, as well as political controversy.

The tribute album features contributions from much younger artists, alumni from Kids United and the Voice Kids, such as Nemo Schiffman, Lou, Ilyana, Dylan and YouTube star Angie Robba.

Robba's version of Sardou's song Rouge, originally from 1984 has been released with a promotional video, with Sardou himself appearing in the clip.

Sardou has been playing some final live dates across France, and plays at La Seine Musicale near Paris from December 26 to January 7 with more dates around the country in February and March 2018.