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Sex, Mozart and chanting monks … the 20 best Euro-pop UK hits – ranked!
As Nena’s 99 Red Balloons turns 40, we look back at the best continental foreign-language songs that achieved cross-Channel success
On which a production team from Viersen, near Monchengladbach, contrived a clever melding of two big late-90s dancefloor trends: the music is audibly inspired by the trance-tinged “epic house” of Faithless and the vocal hinted at the emergent French touch scene – although Daft Punk would doubtless have beheld the results avec horreur. Photograph: François Gragnon/Paris Match/Getty ImagesHardy undoubtedly made better records than her biggest British hit after she wrested creative control of her career – her eponymous 1971 album is a masterpiece – but Tous les Garçons … has a wispy charm of its own: a measured, coolly Gallic take on an early 60s pop ballad. Photograph: United Archives GmbH/AlamyAs with Françoise Hardy, Gainsbourg made many infinitely better records than his biggest British success but never mind: bask instead in its lyrical weirdness, its Salvador Dalí-inspired title, the contrast between the music’s almost church-y grandeur and Birkin’s panting moans, and the controversy it all caused, the latter much to its author’s amusement.
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