J'étais sans toi

Greetings from alternately rainy and far too hot North Carolina! I feel so out of the music loop, but the ocean and beach are helping make up for that (even if I've already managed to burn horribly). Here's what I've managed to learn, mainly from MTV:

• I'm not hugely excited by Justin Timberlake's new music video--or rather, even after watching Making the Video, I still don't understand it (what's the whole spy plot about?)
• More video news: Nick Lachey's new video for "I Can't Hate You Anymore" is nothing exciting, but, even though the song is pretty similar to "What's Left Of Me," "I Can't Hate You Anymore" is an improvement. I'm holding out hope that, after getting these emotional issues off his chest in this album, Nick could go on to be a good male popstar (we could use some more in the U.S.), even though it's probably more likely he'll fade out of the public eye.
• I tried to watch Jessica Simpson and Fergie's new music videos, but since it was TRL playing them, I only saw about a minute of each and cheering covered up the audio for fifteen seconds on either end.
• Lance Bass is coming out. I could have sworn my sister told me this months ago, so it can't be very surprising, but good for him.
• I saw a commercial for Stefy's song "Chelsea" on MTV, which was exciting--I don't expect the song to break records, but I'd like to see it do well. UPDATE to say that I just saw TRL preview a clip of the video, which probably means it's been floating around on YouTube for weeks, but the more publicity, the better.
• Hugely belated congratulations to Darren Hayes for getting married!
• We met the brother of one of the boys on So You Think You Can Dance (the one who danced to "London Bridge" last night) at the beach, which is the closest I've come to meeting a celebrity...unless you count seeing the runners-up in Trading Spaces's million dollar home contest.

Onto today's post...only one song, and I'm not hugely excited about it, but it's all right (and I didn't bring my music collection with me, so I don't have many options).

Thierry Amiel was the runner-up to Jonatan Cerrada on the first season of Nouvelle Star. He's released one album so far and has another scheduled to be released this November. I don't own his first CD, so I may be mistaken in my judgement that most of the songs on it seem a little boring--maybe it was an attempt to prove that, though he lost to Jonatan, he was the better and more serious artist. His music is distinctively French; it doesn't follow the typical mold that, say, most U.S. pop songs do.

Sans toi--Aha! Another moment for my French skills to shine. I'm going to tentatively guess this title translates to "Without You." I hope so, because that's what this song feels like--the chorus seems like Thierry's crying out (not in anger, but not really regular sadness either--maybe desperation?) after being abandoned. It's not a ballad--it has too much energy for that. The chorus is easily the best part of the song, but the rest does an admirable job building up to that chorus cry-out.

To buy a hard copy of Thierry Amiel's CD, Paradoxes, go here; to buy a digital copy, go here.

Next up: probably Norway, but definitely back to English. I should be home on Sunday or Monday, so regular updates should return then.

thierry amiel nouvelle star