5. Veronique SansonAmoureuse

You might know that song ‘Amoureuse’ because it was recorded by Kiki Dee and was a hit. It was one of the first albums in French that I loved. I listened to it last night and it’s striking how fluid it is, everything starts quite intimate and then it’s allowed to grow, but in a way that isn’t metronomic, you can feel that there is a flow, which is really typical of those albums from the 70s and it’s something I really miss. Maybe the way we record now, even when they’re making acoustic albums, they don’t breathe in the same way because everyone records in blocks. You can really hear the difference on an album like that. It’s produced by Michel Berger who’s a famous French songwriter and producer – there’s something to learn from that production because it’s very human. I lived for a while in Paris and she’s still very popular there. When you’re a kid you’re curious and you want to go and experience Paris. I was trying to have that experience, living in Paris and Los Angeles, trying do that Tales Of The City thing. I’m glad it was a time without social media! In LA you’d meet these genuinely eccentric people, and in all those cities it was the first time I really discovered the politics that has now become mainstream, people becoming gendernauts, really questioning the status quo in a way that we weren’t necessarily doing here and being funky and transgressive. I was like a little kid just watching it, but it’s funny how those ideas become mainstream.