Mylène Farmer: Rolling Stone

After months of speculation that new material  was on its way, Mylène Farmer has dropped a new track.

The trailer for the film Ghostland, Mylène's first since 1994, came out last week and was quickly followed by a brief video suggesting the imminent release of the track Rolling Stone.

That track has now come out, a slice of Bollywood flavoured electro pop that sees Mylène working with French DJ/producer Feder. 

Feder's debut single Goodbye was a number one in France and a massive hit elsewhere in 2015, and he's gone on to release more deep house flavoured tracks.

Following the release of Rolling Stone, Feder said on his Facebook page: "Congrats Mylene, glad to be part of the adventure!"

Where that adventure goes next, there's little official word but as always with Mylène there's plenty of speculation. Worth remembering that she's probably France's biggest living music star now, so any new album or tour by her is kind of a big deal. 

Her last album, 2015's Interstellaires, which featured the track Stolen Car - a duet with Sting produced by French DJ The Avener - was a triple platinum seller in France and a top ten hit in 16 countries. It also featured her 14th and 15th number one singles in France.

Since then she's quit Universal Music, where she had been since the start of her career, and signed to Sony Music.

There's no video as yet for Rolling Stone, but one is apparently being shot in Prague and is likely to come out in early February

Ghostland, meanwhile, comes out in France on March 14, with a two days before that at the Grand Rex in Paris. Mylène Farmer expected to attend the event along with the other stars of the movie.

New: Daft Punk - Tron Legacy: R3CONFIGUR3D

While Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy soundtrack was certainly long awaited, I think it left some people a little disappointed as its overall downbeat and sparse nature didn't lend it to the dancefloor, and a feeling that they should just get on with a proper follow-up to 2005's Human After All.

However, it succeeded in being a more experimental release for the French duo, allowing them to take a step well outside the field of dance music. It also managed to fulfil the expectations of a cinema audience while leaving the band's artistic credibility intact.

It was also their highest-profile release so far, taking them to a whole new audience.

However, even if the original release may not have been on the same scale as a full new Daft Punk album, there would certainly be some great remixes to be come, and Tron Legacy: R3CONFIGUR3D collects several of these.

Collaborators on the album includes The Crystal Method, Moby, Photek, Glitch Mob and Paul Oakenfold. They are not names that you would normally associate with a Disney release, and it is all the better for it.

Involvement in a soundtrack work can lead to an artist diluting what they do best in a bid to please an audience that actually isn't all that interested in what they do.

But Daft Punk came away from the Tron: Legacy with credit, and R3CONFIGUR3D builds well on its success.

New: Mylène Farmer - Bleu Noir Video

Mylène Farmer's eagerly-awaited new video for the song Bleu Noir has been released.

I've already featured the song, co-written by Moby, from the album Bleu Noir that was released in December 2010. It's one of seven songs co-written with Moby on the album, who wrote the music while Mylène wrote all the lyrics.

The album was a number one in France and set a record for the number of downloads. Her eighth album has certainly secured her position as France's most significant female artist in recent years.

Oui Mais...Non, which was the last single released from the album, was at number one in France for most of December. Unlike Bleu Noir it was co-written by RedOne, who despite having worker with a huge number of artists is probably best know for his collaborations with Lady Gaga.

While comparisons with Gaga were made with both the song Oui Mais...Non and the video, Bleu Noir is certainly very different. I've always liked Moby, and Mylène's voice and lyrics sit perfectly with his music. My favourite song on the album, no doubt about that.

The video for Bleu Noir was directed by Olivier Dahan, the director best known for the film La Vie En Rose, the Oscar-winning movie about the life of Edith Piaf. It's a tasteful and cinematic video, that not only looks incredibly polished and classy but keeps an edge that makes it seem very natural and almost spontaneous.

Mylène Farmer's record company has set up a website for the video here >

You can watch the video and tweet a link to it so your Twitter message will be included in a montage of Twitter users who have passed on the link. Nice idea and clever bit of new media marketing!