I've been abducted by French pop music...send help

Okay...this might be a bit hard to follow, but that's just how my mind works.

Roughly speaking, it goes something like this... Start at iTunes, follow a link to a German music review podcast, hear some Charlotte Gainsbourg songs, realize she's the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg (which is awesome), go back to iTunes to find the album (it's not there), look up Serge Gainsbourg on wikipedia, read his bio, follow a link to a clip of Gainsbourg telling a young Whitney Houston 'I want to f*ck you' on a French television talk show, chuckle a bit about the irony of the previous scene, go back to wikipedia, follow a link to France Gall, read a bit about her career, follow yet another link and find this awesome bit of 60s goodness.

But it's not all about being cute, blonde, young and French. France Gall was certainly all of those things. She was top of the pop pile after bursting onto the French scene in the mid 1960s. Although she had already had a couple of hits before it, the song that put her on top was the little ditty above - 'Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son' - which was written by Serge Gainsbourg. She won a Eurovision award for it and found herself in the limelight as a teenager.

Gall had another hit with a Gainsbourg song about a girl who loved suckers. You can imagine the double entendre going on there. She didn't catch it until it was pointed out to her sometime later, much to her embarrassment.

She went on to do much more work over the years - becoming a French icon along the way - but the work that was most important had little to do with music and much to do with humanity.

Gall was a great advocate for the people of Africa, raising funds and awareness of the plight of starving millions. She was instrumental in the original Feed the World concert and several other large scale charity works.

People who extend themselves beyond the expectations of others are truly inspiring and those who extend themselves to help others in need are even more so.

Beautiful, French and blonde? You bet, but Gall's real beauty comes from caring about others. That's a beauty worth having.



I blame iTunes for causing me to waste a couple of hours. If they had only had Charlotte Gainsbourg's '5:55', I would have just downloaded it from there instead of getting sidetracked in the quicksand of French pop music.

But then again I wouldn't have found all the fun stuff I did...and I wouldn't have been reminded how much of a difference one person can make if only they care enough.