Sylvie Vartan “2’35 De Bonheur” 1967/2021
This album finds Ms Vartan starting to further shed her teen pop image. The production is a weird combination of period garagey rock sounds combined with a chamber pop style that I’ve only ever heard French productions of the time pull off. There’s some originals that seem to be written for her and some covers (lots of Motown). But for me the stand out is her orchestrated cover of the Spencer Davis Groups’s “Gimme Some Lovin’”. She may not have the pipes that Steve Winwood had on the original but she’s strong enough a singer to sell it. Plus the arrangement is pretty neat. They seemed to have used the grainiest photo they could find for the cover. Things were maybe hinting at some weirdness on the horizon but they weren’t quite there yet. The next album that came after this was where it actually got weird but that was keeping with the times.
