Carla Bruni: Chez Keith et Anita.

A new single by Carla Bruni, as the former first lady makes her return to music with the song Chez Keith et Anita.

With her husband out of office she's probably got a bit more time on her hands and can

The song comes from her forthcoming fourth album entitled Little French Songs and it comes five years after he last release Comme si de rien n'était.

While her day job as first lady kept her busy, she still had time for the occasional release, with her last album coming out during her husband's time in office. Whatever people's views were about her husband didn't stop it reaching number one in the French charts. It was also a critical success, many noting that the songs were mostly her own work, with two cover versions and another song adapting the work of Michel Houellebecq.

Bruni's changed her record label, moving from Naive records to a branch of Universal Music, which suggests the album will be given a much higher international profile than her previous company could have done.

Reports suggest that she's keen to see the release as a continuation of her career as a musician rather than a comeback following her involvement in the world of politics, and the new song certainly sounds like a natural progression on her previous work.

Her new album is released on Barclay records on April the first, and there is a possibility that she'll tour later in the year.

2012 Presidential election

An absolutely massive weekend for France, and while the election result may have come as little surprise, its magnitude cannot be diminished.

It marks a turning point, and it will have implications on the French music scene as much as it will have an impact on every area of life in the Republic.

Things will settle, and it remains to be seen if change will be as radical as some expect or as fundamental as some fear. It should be remembered that the  result was actually quite close, it was no landslide, and Hollande will face a huge amount of social and political inertia.

Although the same could be said for Sarkozy and his right-wing predecessors. Each came to office with a promise of shaking the country up in a similar way to Margaret Thatcher in the UK. All failed in this ambition, and although each did manage to pass many an unpopular piece of legislation, the core Republican values were not transformed into an Anglo-Saxon free-market free for all.

A couple of other thoughts about the campaign. It was possible for an outsider - non native French speaker located outside France as I am - to folllow it like never before. Twitter and Facebook brought comment and developments in a minute-by-minute basis, opinion came from blogs and news sites - special credit to France 24 - and video could be quickly caught up with on YouTube.

A real success in new media coverage of the election.

But this certainly wasn't the picture on the traditional broadcast media. Again, the UK media followed the usual line of ignoring it completely until the first round of the election, then focusing on the National Front's vote. Their scripts were already written, and the narrative would be about another chapter in the rise of the European right, missing the significance of a Socialist president

We are always better informed about the US elections than we ever are about the French elections.

 I would guess that just about anyone in the UK asked to 'name the president' would answer 'Obama' before thinking to ask 'Which president?...'

And on the National Front vote, although disappointed to see them getting any popular support, it was heartening to see them completely collapse under any political pressure. Had Le Pen reciprocated to Sarkozy's disgusting overtures the political map of the country could be very different, with potentially a UMP president indebted to the FN. But the fascists fell apart under pressure due no doubt to a fatal combination of arrogance and stupidity.

But it's time for optimism and looking ahead at hopefully better times.

Apologies if this blog reads like one of the many political blogs that haunt the internet today. It's a music blog, but music doesn't exist in a vacuum and political circumstances shape music and the music of France is no different in that it is part of a wider political and cultural environment.

If nothing else, Carla Bruni will have more time to focus on her musical career.

Françoise Hardy - Comment te dire adieu

Politics can be a tricky business, particularly for those who are not actually politicians.

Françoise Hardy says she will leave France if Socialist candidate François Hollande winds this month's presidential election.

It's over Hollande's proposal to tax millionaires 75% of their salaries.

Hardy told Le Point magazine that the policy would leave her 'living in the street' and that she would have to move to London or New York if Hollande gets in.

London's a pretty welcoming place to the non-domiciled super rich, where the tax breaks to foreigners who can say they have a 'residency' outside the UK while they are domiciled there are only a little behind places like Monaco, making it a friendly place for many a Greek shipping magnate, Russian oligarch and Arab oil heir.

She told the magazine that she only earns a meagre 150,000 euros a year, a fact certain to win her friends in the difficult economic times.

I'm reminded of the story about how Phil Collins would leave the UK if the Labour Party won the 1992 UK general election. He moved to Switzerland two years later even though Labour didn't win.

Whether his move to the tax haven was related - Collins said it was not - and the quote was misunderstood - he said he's never been a Conservative Party supporter - the story certainly stuck and Phil Collins has never enjoyed the widespread success he had in the UK in the 1980s since.

However, I'm sure Collins, worth apparently £115m and one of the richest people in the UK music industry and still residing in Switzerland, is not hugely troubled.

Hardy, incidentally, made her first TV appearance in 1962 during an interlude in a programme reporting the results of a presidential election referendum. Charles de Gaulle was president at the time, and the referendum helped secure the powerful position that the president currently has in France.

Politics can indeed be a tricky business.

Rétro: Brigitte Bardot

While not unexpected, the misjudged intervention in the French 2012 election campaign by Brigitte Bardot is a sad reminder that racism is still very much present in France.

Bardot wrote to Nicolas Sarkozy accusing him of letting down animals by failing to ban halal slaughter. She's also called on mayors to back Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National party, in the election.

Bardot's politics having been to the far right for some time, her present husband being a one-time adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen and himself former Front National leader. There are also her previous convictions for inciting racial hatred against Muslims.

While not exactly out of character, it's sad for a couple of reasons. Obviously it shows that racist attitudes are still very much viewed by many as acceptable. When someone in the public eye - and whether she has 'retired' or not, Bardot is well aware that she remains a public figure - expressed such abhorrent and nonsensical views

It's also sad considering how she was when she was young, regarded internationally as one of the icons of French style and glamour. She was unique, there was no British or American equivalent of Bardot.

Similarly it's a disappointment as her opinions damage much of the work towards animal welfare in France. Calls for humane treatment of animals will be viewed by many now as covertly racially motivated.

But at her peak she was a genuine icon who many have since tried to emulate, mostly without the same degree of success.

There are many great clips of her musical work online, including her work with Gainsbourg, but this song with its recent use as the soundtrack for a commercial deserves to be heard for more than just 20-30 seconds in an advert break.

Sarkozy's Deezer playlist II

More on Nicolas Sarkozy on Deezer, with the publication of the playlist of sings suggested to him by his supporters on his Facebook.

It's a polite selection, unlikely to upset the voters too much, as conservative as you'd expect.

cat Stevens, Leonard Cohen, Dire Straits and Adele are there to show a bit of anglophone sophistication.

Some Sibelius to show he's the kind of guy that gets classical music, but not too much.

meanwhile there are plenty of the big names in French music, Mylene Farmer, Boris Vian, Francis Cabrel and Michel Sardou, who has come a long way from being banned by Charles de Gaulle.

La Marsaillese also makes an appearance, perhaps surprising that it wasn't there in his original playlist.

Kavinsky's Nightcall, from the Drive soundtrack, is probably the most contemporary track in the selection.

You could spend hours analysing the selection. I'm sure Team Sarko's experts already have.

Take Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen, with the lyric: "Everybody knows the boat is leaking/everybody knows that the captain lied."

Or Michel Sardou's Le France, written from the point of view of the the ocean liner that no longer wants to be known by that name because France has let it down.

I suspect TV executives are already editing montage sequences with pictures of Sarko's campaign with some of these songs.

Sarkozy's Deezer playlist

With elections coming up fast, Sarko has sueednly woken up to the power of new media.

He's now on twitter, and on his facebook page announced a playlist of his "classics" was on Deezer.

He says that these are songs that he appreciates and which go with him wherever he goes.

It's - needless to say - a fairly conservative list. Some Johnny, some Elvis, some Brassens, which I'm sure will have the old anarchist spinning in his grave.

Some Carla Bruni there too.

Sarkoland by Trust is noticeably absent from the collection. So far. He's asked on facebook for recommendations from 'friends', and already attracted around a thousand comments.

Helpful suggestions inclde Gainsbourg's Requiem Pour Un Con. Be interesting to see what actually gets added to the playlist as the election campaign progresses.

Carla Bruni - You've Got The Silver

In light of the birth of France's First Baby, I thought it worth putting on a video of Carla Bruni doing what she used to be known best for in her pre-Sarko days.

I'll leave the politics and the celebrity stuff to other blogs. There's plenty that can be said there and little point in me adding to the debate.

Bruni has been working in music since 1997, her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit coming out in 2002, having already worked with Julien Leclerc's 200 album Si j'étais elle.

Her second album came out in 2007, featuting the work of leading poets set to music, and her third Comme si de Rien N'était the following year, after she was married to Sarkozy.

Given her track record with classic rock artists a cover version of a Rolling Stones song seemed appropriate and its an interesting take on one of their many great songs hidden in their back catalogue.

Carla's sound is a sophisticated and jazzy one, along the lines of american artists like Norah Jones. It's a smooth and easy listening experience to sooth troubled ears.

I'm sure given the current difficult times, it's exactly the kind of thing that Monsieur le Président needs to chill out to after a hard day at the office.