They are spelled the same but have nothing in common.
Michel Polnareff (1970)
If the right won the elections after May 1968, it was because the country was not ready to hand over the reins to a young “sex, drugs & rock’n’roll” generation, one of whose incarnations was called Polnareff. His eccentric outfits, his androgynous look (we didn’t yet say queer), his long hair were all targets for the zeros of old France. It was one of them who, in May 1970 in Périgueux, got on stage during a concert and kicked him in the balls while calling him a faggot. A few months later, the man with the eternal white sunglasses sent out this folk-pop pamphlet where, while he loudly proclaimed his virility, he also emphasized the right to be different: “society having given up / on transforming me / on disguising me / to look like it”. Fifty years and a bit later, it’s still true.
Zazie (2007)
Isabelle de Truchis de Varennes, her real name, often states that I am a manis in the pantheon of her favorite songs. It is also one of her big hits, nominated for the 2008 Victoires de la Musique in the Song of the Year category. Unlike Michou’s pamphleteering ego-trip, Obispo’s best friend here places herself in the position of a Man with a capital M. But it is not very joyful, even depressing. Torn between desires provoked by the ultra-consumerist society and environmental guilt and having seen and known everything (“I made love and revolution”) our venerable sapiens has only one horizon: “I’m going round in circles, I’m going round in circles” as the refrain proclaims. Waiting for the extinction of the species? Almost twenty years later, we are still here. It is not necessarily brighter.
