"Laissez tomber les filles" - 1964 by France Gall
A great song with an MTV-style music video years ahead of its time.
"Laissez tomber les filles" (Drop the Other Girls) - 1964 by France Gall
A collection of important musicians helped to make this song sung by France Gall, born Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne Gall. Composed by Serge Gainsbourg and is really unique for its MTV-style music video with a dramatized story instead of the typical simple stage performance. In the video, a young France Gall, who was only 16 at the time, plays a high school girl warning a boy about playing with her heart.
The song wasn’t actually that popular when it came out, but has since come to be seen as a classic of Yé-Yé and French pop music.
In some ways, this song was a precursor to some feminist ideas in popular music, long before such movements became mainstream, and definitely before they became popular in France, if they ever did. The song is backed by a jazz ensemble led by Alain Goraguer, a figure as influential as Burt Bacharach in the US in his time. Goraguer’s contributions were instrumental (ha) to defining French music in the 20th century. He arranged many of Serge Gainesbourg’s biggest hits, but also many jazz, pop, electronic and movie soundtracks for a lengthy list of French artists.