#france 2007

[umlewis]

lewis hamilton, p3, during the post-race press conference, france - july 1, 2007

[umseb]

bmw sauber reserve driver sebastian vettel in the garage during fp2, france - june 29, 2007 📷 fred dufour / getty

[irarann]

THE GAYS ARE BACK WERE SO BACK LOOK AT THEM IN ALL THEIR TWINKY GLORY

oh!

[zegalba]

Philippe Rahm: Diurnisme (2007) Location: Paris, France

[pedroam-bang]

Atonement (2007)

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[amywinehousequeen]

Amy Winehouse in France, Jan 25th 2007

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Four months after the death of her husband, a woman on the brink of motherhood is tormented in her home by a strange woman who wants her unborn baby.

[vertigoartgore]

2007's Comic Box Extra #2/Comic Box Noir cover (a famous french magazine about american comics) by cover artist Frank Quitely.

[dozydawn]

[meowmeowmessi]

yamal's emergence on the world stage just as messi's on his last legs is actually kind of insanely poetic lol

[umlewis]

lewis hamilton, p3, is interviewed during the post-race press conference, france - july 1, 2007

[umseb]

bmw sauber reserve driver sebastian vettel in the garage on practice day, france - june 29, 2007 📷 paul gilham / getty

[stvrfux]

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water lilies (2007)

naissance des pieuvres

[fuckyeah-jessicabiel]

Jessica Biel for FHM France, September 2007

[eurovision-revisited]

Eurovision 2007 - Number 61 - Les Fatals Picards - "L'amour à La Française"

I love a chaotic national final and very few national finals have been as chaotic as Eurovision 2007 : et si on gagnait, France Télévisions new idea for selecting their Eurovision contender. I'll go into the final in more detail later, but suffice to say - it's nuts and one of the best things I've seen.

The winners emerging, clawing their way out of the chaos were Les Fatals Picards, one of the two contenders picked by public TV channel France 3 as their candidates. They were a group of five men from (I presume) Picardy and since the 1990s, they'd been writing, performing and touring their own comedic and parodic songs across France. Their style was alt-rock, light-punk, a hint of ska and a lot of tongues firmly wedged in cheeks.

In 2007 they would go on to release their third album with one of the all time great titles, Pamplemousse Mécanique, a record which Discogs classifies as chanson/punk. First though they'd submitted a song to the French national final as for the first time in a few years, France Télévisions had an open call for submissions. L'amour à la Française (Love, French Style) was one of the ten picked from more than 1,500 entries.

In the band's own words, it was a song meant to combine French romance and punk, for beginners. It's really a song about Parisien cliché finding time to mention in its Franglais patois, the Eiffel Tour, Les Champs Elysées, Chanel handbags, the Seine and the Moulin Rouge. A pastiche of everything non-French people picture when they think of France.

It is a lot of fun, swinging from wistful memories of times lost to melodramatic declarations of love to swinging through les rues de Paris with the giddy pulse of love flowing through their veins. If this had been a year packed full of ballads, the song would have stood a mile for it's gentle punk charm and the fact they seem to have a ball on stage with their faux fur, angel wings and pink neckerchiefs.

They went into Eurovision with high hopes. They're quoted as saying France has been humiliated and flouted for 30 years by countries that deserve less. It is time for France to shine the torch of European culture with blue, white and red (the colours of the French flag). The colours of love.

Alas 2007 was a year after 2006 and everyone was trying something new. The ballads and the pop were being dumped in favour of rock, metal, and anything and everything else. If anything Les Fatals Picards were just too lightweight among all of this. They also had the misfortune of being from one of the Big Four countries and hence never gaining the advantage of trial by semi-final.

They finished twenty-second and even more ignominiously, in a tie with Scooch. Their sudden rise to fame was a little bit too much for them and founder member Ivan Callot left a few months after Eurovision. The band, though, continued and rode that fame to record deals and many more albums. Their latest was earlier this year (2024). Here's a live performance of one of their more recent songs Les Playmobils Complotistes (The Conspiratorial Playmobil) - which should give you a taste of the more regular output.