Three years ago, Iggy Pop surprised the world with the album Preliminaires, an album of mixed English and French songs inspired by the Michel Houellebecq novel La Possibilité d'une Ile (The Possibility of an Island). Including Iggy's takes on everything from Autumn Leaves to the 40's jazz sounding King of the Dogs.
Pop is going back to that album's style with his latest, Après, which will be out on May 9. The album is a mix of French and English covers from artists like Serge Gainsbourg (La Javanaise), Edith Piaf (La vie en Rose), the Beatles (Michelle) and Frank Sinatra (Only the Lonely).
Iggy posted his take on the album on his Facebook page:
All popular music forms of today get their strength from the beat. Rap, hip-hop, metal, pop, and rock producers will tell you that the beats they use imitate the human heartbeat and that is where the power lies. The feeling of listening to any of these forms is always some variation on excitement, but before the birth of the blues there was another form of popular song, in which the timing comes from the human breath and the feelings are much more about emotion. These older ways of expression were known variously as bel canto, chanson, plainsong or just folk music. I've always loved this other feeling, one that is intimate, sometimes a little sad, and does not try to beat me on the head. So I wanted to sing some of these songs myself, hoping to bring the feeling I felt as a listener to my listeners through my voice. Many of these songs are in French, probably because it is French culture which has most stubbornly resisted the mortal attacks of the Anglo-American music machine.
Iggy Pop
Track List:
Et si tu n’existais pas (Joe Dassin)
La Javanaise (Serge Gainsbourg)
Everybody's Talkin' (Harry Nilsson)
I'm Going Away Smiling (Yoko Ono)
La vie en Rose (Edith Piaf)
Les Passantes (Georges Brassens)
Syracuse (Henri Salvador)
What Is This Thing Called Love? (Cole Porter)
Michelle (The Beatles)
Only the Lonely (Frank Sinatra)
