Monday 7 January 2013

Editorial: Bonne année!



The baubles and tinsel have been put away, and it's time to get on with January.

Whether your Christmas involved turkey and xmas pud or oysters and champagne, hope you all had a great time.

It's been a busy time for me, although one that meant less time in the past few weeks to devote to the blog than I normally woulod. Hopefully a few festive tunes that I dropped on the site helped with your holidays in their own way.

It was a great month for traffic to the site, our third busiest month yet, which is hugely encouraging. There were some great releases towards the end of last year, giving a strong finish to what really was a vintage year in French music. In terms of visitors to the site, last year saw things developing dramatically with the overwhelming number of visitors coming in the past 12 months, not bad for a site that's been around since 2010.

Albums by Johnny Hallyday and Mylène Farmer were huge commercial releases, and showed that the established artists can still put out material that matters.

Meanwhile, the year also saw amazing releases by the likes of BB Brunes, Saez, M and Sébastien Tellier, not forgetting acts as varied as Lescop and Gojira putting out material that showed French acts could be world class. Meanwhile, David Guetta continued to rule the dance world, and Madonna bacame the world's highest grossing touring act of the year, on the back of al album that featured Martin Solveig.

2013 already sees new releases by the likes of Indochine on the immediate horizon, and a massive and long awaited tour by Mylène Farmer in the autumn likely to attract a massive amount of international attention to the French music scene in general.

Meanwhile, the Oscar and Golden Globe awards are take place shortly, with France having done particularly well last year. This month also sees the NRJ Music awards in Cannes.

Last year in my January editorial I commented: "This is an exciting time for music, and France is more than ever playing a part on the world stage." True indeed, and I reckon that the sentiment carries well for 2013.

This year's plans? Not to set out unrealistic plans, just to enjoy the music and listen to as much of it as I can, and pass it on. Sound like a good idea?

As always, I can be contacted by email at the address johnkilbride AT hotmail DOT com, with the spaces and the appropriate @ and . in the address, or on twitter where you can find us @viveleroq

Merci et à bientôt

jk

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