C'est Chic! (French Girl Singers of the 1960s)

For years, those who have discovered the ever-so-French joys of ye-ye, the Gallic equivalent of British Invasion pop, have been hampered by the fact that aside from the biggest stars of the style--France Gall, Françoise Hardy and Brigitte Bardot, in descending order of singing talent and ascending order of hotness--very little of the good stuff has been made easily available. UK reissue specialists Ace Records have fixed that problem in one fell swoop with the near-perfect introduction C'est Chic! (French Girl Singers of the 1960s). All three of the above are represented, each by representative but not overexposed tunes, as are a few names even the ye-ye novice might recognize: Anna Karina, best known for her starring roles in many of Jean-Luc Godard's best '60s films, contributes the startlingly hard-edged Serge Gainsbourg fuzztone rocker "Roller Girl," and British superstar Petula Clark (who was married to a Frenchman and lived in Paris for most of the '60s) is represented by the charming little beat-group tune "Donne Moi." After that, the names get more obscure to all but the dedicated ye-ye collector, but the quality doesn't suffer a bit: in particular, the soaring chorus and elaborate arrangement of Arlette Zola's 1971 single "Je Suis Folle De Tant T'aimer" are so tantalizingly familiar that a listener might go nuts trying to figure out which classic old AM radio nugget it sounds like, and Christie Laume's "L'adorable Femme Des Neiges" is as winsomely charming as its title.