Hollywood, Mon Amour

Introduction by Marc Collin
Rock and pop have reached and passed the ripe old age of 50... yes, they've aged and now seem to be retracing their steps somewhat to their golden past.

Like Nouvelle Vague, Hollywood, Mon Amour revisits a genre, a period, retaining only the basic skeleton of the songs (melody and lyrics) to demonstrate that by arranging them differently they can take on a new life while still respecting the original. The titles are, certainly for my generation, classics in their genre.

For this project my attention was drawn to the songs featured in the movies of the 80s, those mainly produced in Hollywood... strangely enough, you come across quite a lot of bands from the post punk era whose success led them to writing songs for feature films... Blondie comes to mind, Simple Minds, The Human league, Duran Duran and their godfather, David Bowie. Even if all these songs were a huge success, and will always remain classics, nowadays they suffer from having that typical end of the 80s sound which isn't any longer of our times.

John Barry is hailed by one and all for the film music he composed in the 60s, 70s right up until the 90s, and while Diamonds are Forever or Goldfinger are the first songs that spring to mind, what about A View to A Kill, written like the others for a Bond film in '85 and performed by Duran Duran? Barry's musical star has certainly not waned since then, it's still there, possibly hidden somewhat by (perhaps) a little too much make-up. So, let's imagine what A View to A Kill would have sounded like if Barry had produced it 10 years earlier...

Well, here is not history revisited, but a part of musical history rewritten that all came about while rearranging the songs from the movies of the 80s, each time imagining a different story and a different era. For the project I surrounded myself with the finest voices I have had the pleasure to come across recently: Skye, Juliette Lewis, Cibelle, Yael Naim, Dea Li, Katrine Ottosen, Nadeah, Leelou,Nancy Danino, Bianca Calandra ...

Hollywood, Mon Amour (some people will undoubtedly see an allusion to French cinema here), is a collection of the greatest songs from the movies of the 80s rearranged by Marc Collin, Nouvelle Vague's producer.