AMG Review of Belle Epoque: EMI's French Girls 1965-1968

J. Scott McClintock
All Music Guide

La Belle Epoque: EMI's French Girls 1965-1968 celebrates the era of the miniskirt by pulling together some of France's most stellar femmes du pop from a period when sexy, singing gals, on both sides of La Manche, were all the rage. Those three years of eternal spring found women dominating not only the charts but the clubs as well, with a breezy, unconscious sexiness that never seemed to go out of style. These songs age remarkably well and still hold an air of exquisite hipness and cosmopolitan sophistication that no other era (save perhaps Mike Alway's jet-setting El Records ventures from the '80s) seems to evoke. This is escapist pop of the highest order -- and essential.