Sylvie Vartan - En anglais... et en américain (2016)

Sylvie Vartan is a French pop institution, as popular today as when she first took the y-y scene by storm in 1962 with the first of a half century-worth of hits. The vivacious and always stylish Vartan was also a pioneer amongst the new breed of French female artists, crossing the Atlantic several times in the early 60s to record. She proved remarkably adept at tackling material in English, which resulted in many superb recordings chanted in a husky, compelling accent. Sylvie's main foreign release in that era was the US-only album 'Gift Wrapped In Paris'. It combined tracks from the 1963 'Sylvie a Nashville' LP along with new sessions cut in New York in late 1964 with a crack session crew and the likes of Ellie Greenwich on backing vocals. Later on Sylvie recorded in England and utilized the talents of her husband Johnny Hallyday's in-house writers, Tommy Brown and Mick Jones, the latter later to become famous in the band Foreigner.