Mylène Farmer

[Constantine 4,070]

Legendary artist, better than Madonna etc

 

C'est Une Belle Journee is so fucking beautiful and unsettling. Love her lyrics even if I don't understand half of 'em

 

another fave

[CatchTheBreeze 1,681]

Mylène was my favourite artist for over a decade (until Lana arrived... ). I even administered the german fan site for several years and had the luck seeing her 3 times on her Mylenium tour in 2000. Those were really magical moments. I'm a bit sad her music went downhill since "Innamoramento".

[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

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[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

+ђш

[Lirazel 700]

I finally got into Mylene's music. I've started with the Les Mots compilation, and later on purchased copies of L'autre, Anamorphosee and Points de Suture.

I have also managed a torrent of all her stuff up to Monkey Me, but I prefer to listen to real CDs lately... I still haven't memorized all the songs from the albums mentioned above, so I will wait with listening to the downloaded records. 

What drives me insane is that there are no English websites about Mylene... I could really use quality song translations. I can run the interviews via Google translate, but the lyrics are not literal enough for automatic translations to make sense. 

I feel like I miss out on the poetry of Mylene's lyrics when I can only get the rough translation of them (which barely makes any sense).

I'm looking forward to watching her live shows and music videos.

[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

чћж

[Lirazel 700]

To be honest, with all that I already written, Mylene does not really have deep and meaningful lyrics (anymore). In fact on her last couple of albums her lyrics have become totally ...well... kinda stupid

and this is not only me who is telling that

 

Her lyrics more set the mood than that they are about meaning - if you understand

 

Yes, there are some great songs up til Avant Que L'Ombre album ... 

 

You know what sucks? I don't even know what Innamoramento means! Want to explain it to me?

I'm listening to the old records first, so I would love to get the feel of the lyrics. I really like what I've seen by far - Desechantee and XXL are great (each in their own way). I also love Optimistique Moi but I get the lyrics very vaguely, I'm not entirely sure that I truly understand what they are supposed to be about.

Every time I read those butchered translations, I end up more confused than I was before. For example, what is the meaning of Fuck them All? Is this some kind of feminist manifesto? I have no idea. 

 

I find it shocking that Mylene has not many English-speaking fans. After all, France is extremely loved and considered fashionable. It would make sense for the French music stars to have worldwide presence, sort of like K-Pop... And yet Mylene is virtually unknown. 

[CatchTheBreeze 1,681]

The new Mylène single to me is her worst single ever! I can't stand it at all. I really hate it that she sounds like a shallow radio pop singer now after being a dark and mysterious "black widow" in the 80's and 90's...

 

[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

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[Jazzmin 297]

First of all, I will say that it is considered among fans that Innamoramento is her best album. Certainly my favorite. Also it has the most beautiful booklet of all her albums. The title means In love in Italian.

 

Excuse my nitpicking but 'innamoramento' actually means 'falling/being in love' -  as for 'in love', I would rather translate it into 'innamorato/innamorata' (m/f). Like, it is the first translation that springs to mind in my case, me being an Italian (though non-native) speaker. The focus is on the process/feeling itself, not on the person that feels it.

 

According to Wikipedia:

 

The song's title, which is the same as its parent album, is based on a Francesco Alberoni book, Le Choc amoureux, meaning Innamoramento in Italian and s'énamourer in Old French. Farmer explained that the song is about the fact of loving "in its larger spectrum".^%5B3%5D Journalist Benoît Cachin said the song deals with the themes of rebirth, love, and the questions that they raise.^{%5B4%5D%5B5%5D} According to psychologist Hugues Royer, the song is "like the call of a solitude that wants to be broken".^%5B6%5D

 

(Not that I recommend Wikipedia (the one in English) as the sole source but I do find it a very good place to start when to comes to MF interpretations, just to get some idea what they can look like. They are mostly all very subjective, no hard facts and it's up to you whether you accept or reject some hypothesis. In my opinion, claiming that 'the X lyrics are nothing about Y, they are about Z' is... well, weird if both interpretations make sense. )

 

I think the whole point of using that particular word is to differentiate between 'falling in love' and 'love' - the original title of the book is Innamoramento e amore. By no means am I an expert but according to the descriptions of the book I skimmed, the differentiation is pretty significant and, IMHO, so is it to MF. I don't even begin to explain Alberoni's whole work right now but suffice it to say that is the innamoramento is something along the lines of the initial stage that leads to the amore or the process in which the amore is born. Well, hopefully I am not talking rubbish right now, you know, at least I tried...

 

And the title sounds InnamorAMENto (no some common French word) probably also because it contains that amen. Mylène is a sucker for word plays.

 

As for MF's interpretation of the innamoramento, I don't even begin to since the album deals with a plethora of themes and describes multiple kinds of love.

 

 

Again I would say that much of her lyrics are not deep or meaningful in general way. Part of her mistery were very vague lyrics which you can make of as you like.

 

Personally, I've just begun to listen to Mylène's music again (not having done it for quite a long time). Haven't listened to her newest stuff yet. As for her older lyrics, I've grown more critical of her lyrics, apparently. Not all of them but to my surprise, a few of her songs seem stupider to me now than they did a few years ago. Gee, time flies.

 

On the whole, I find a lot of them chaotic and vague indeed. The way I see them (and please bear in mind that I don't speak French, I simply learned to understand it a bit, thanks to the MF & Alizée songs... and dictionaries):

a) some are more or less well written, there is actual content to them (and if vague, they are intentionally vague),

b) some make sense or don't, depending on the attitude of the listener (if you are looking for thoroughly written, thought out lyrics you'll be disappointed; however, if you want to make sense out of them, you will, the way you read tea leaves; a lot of the lyrics of this kind base on double entendres when there is in fact hardly any purpose they serve, being there just for the sake of it);

c) some are total mess.

 

Needless to say, that's very personal, everyone is entitled to their own view on her stuff.

 

EDIT: Merde, I've just gotten into Mylène & Alizée again. Must be something about my melancholy. Someone may ask how come Alizée fits my current mood since her stuff is far more optimistic than Mylène's... (Although there's an exception to every rule, vide "Lui ou toi" or "Cœur déjà pris". And having delved into her lyrics, I find many of them much darker than they seem on the surface, I've got a feeling I've already written that somewhere.) Well, dunno, I guess it just reminds me of a period in my life that keeps bringing tears to my eyes now... and simultaneously helps me deal with my pain.

 

@@Lirazel , I'll be making a doc containing some MF lyrics (and one day, hopefully, all of them) and my makeshift PL 'translations', do you want one, too? In this mess called my life, I'm not starting my French classes anytime soon, so I want to try out another way of learning it. Kind of. Just some sketches, helping me to memorize vocabulary and to find out as much about the lyrics as I can on my own. I, too, really hate not understanding the songs I listen to.   As I said, I do realize I can't even begin to fully comprehend French texts and I am certainly not the right person to translate them. After all, I often have a hard time translating Russian or Italian songs/poems, that is, written in languages which I DO understand pretty well. However, better a small fish...

Edited December 19, 2018 by Biesa

[Lirazel 700]

@ I am always so happy to see your posts, especially on topics I don't know much about, like Mylene. You always write such insightful things.

Thanks for explaining Innamoramento to me.

And yes, I would love the file with translations! I can't understand French at all so I would really appreciate them. I want to talk about Mylene more with you too.

 

I really miss recently being obsessed about some kind of an artist and reading up on their 'lore' like I used to do with Emilie. Too bad we are not in Opheliac era anymore... I wish I could get to know Mylene more.

[Jazzmin 297]

@@Lirazel Try out the Innamoramento album.

 

Seems my personal favorite one right now. And 1999-2003 were Laurent Boutonnat's golden era, too. [MF's] Innamoramento, [Alizée's] Gourmandises & Mes Courants Électriques are fucking flawless.

 

Not that I want to discourage you from listening to Monkey Me the album but I find it quite weak compared to Mylène's older stuff, except for such gems as Je te dis tout. And the music video is just beautiful - it teems with references to the beginning of her career which you might not get but I guess it's still worthwhile. (Although I do like the titular song, Quand & Nuit d'hiver. Oh, and also kind of Love Dance because of its absurd lyrics.)

[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

ђшж
 

[GroupieLove 2,620]

Sans Contrefaçon is hitting hard today