I am typically French.
When I was little, I was listening to the Beatles, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, and stuff. I had a big soul music culture, and not so much a French one.
I've never heard Daft Punk; I've never heard a track of theirs in my life. They're the two guys with motorcycle helmets on?
I listened to John Denver and Simon & Garfunkel. Edith Piaf was a huge favourite. Then I discovered musicals - I loved 'Les Miserables' - and, at about 14, I started listening to David Gray.
Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round.
When I was first introduced to the music of Jacques Brel, I was totally floored. I had never heard anything as intelligent or sexy or angry as his music.
I love Feist. I love Francoise Hardy. She was a French singer-songwriter in the '60s who was pretty huge. I think I'm drawn to her sincerity. I love Fiona Apple, too - she's quirky and really honest in her lyrics.
My parents used to play me this album when I couldn't go to sleep. It was called 'Deep Forest.' I think it was a self-titled record. It's actually still one of my favorite albums of all time.
Speaking of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us.
The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.
I was in Paris for nine years, starting in '98. One of the great things when I was first there were these wonderful CD collections, selling for almost nothing. For ten euros, you'd get three CDs of all the Gershwin songs.
Edith Piaf knocked my socks off when I was 8, but I didn't know what she was singing about.
I lived in Paris for two years with my family. I would roam the streets of Paris during the day for a few hours in the subway, on the streets, and I listened to the French language, and I got a sense of the rhythm and the melody of the language.
I've always loved French music. My parents adored it; my father played it on the piano.
I love Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, Blondie.
When I first began writing music I was really inspired by the French electro scene.
The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk, Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk, Is always happy, reign whoever may, And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away.
The French - they like jazz, they've been on jazz a long time.
You are the eternal France, I love you.
The culture of France is unique because it's a culture that has a high priority on the arts, more than any other place in the world in our time since Greece. So as a practicing artist, if you will, this is home ground. They love us, so music, literature, art continues to be the center.
It'd be cool to chipmunk-ize 'The Virgin Suicides' soundtrack. All this ethereal French music, I think that would be unique to listen to.
In France the music schools are a bit old fashioned. I was more excited about doing my own stuff or to play with my friend in my band, than studying the piano.
I just started studying opera - very, very much as hobby - and for some reason I've been gravitating toward French composers, like a lot of Debussy and Faure. I find it a really sinuous and spooky language to sing in.
I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.
When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.
