Scientist helps revive ’60s genre of French pop
PASADENA, Calif. — When Victoria Meyer was summoned a few years ago by one of her bosses at La Canada Flintridge’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she assumed it was related to her daily work poring over satellite imagery for information to better understand climate change and deforestation.
The problem, though, was wholly unrelated.
“He said, ‘My boss has a friend who is a music producer who is looking for someone to help write a song in French,’” said Meyer, a France native, who goes only by Victoria on “Joueuse,” a new EP with five songs that revisit the 1960s French subgenre of pop known as ye-ye.
The effervescent, melodic sound sprouted in response to Beatlemania — the genre’s name (pronounced “yayyay”) derives from the
French rendering of “Yeah, yeah, yeah” — and American pop of that time, specifically girl groups such as the Shirelles, the Chiffons and the Shangri-Las.
The friend who was scouting for a translator and writing partner was Andy Paley, a veteran producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who briefly had a power-pop duo in the 1970s with his brother, Jonathan: the Paley Brothers.
“I’ve always loved the sound of classic pop music and love making records with that sound,” he said.
His invitation, Meyer said, piqued her curiosity.
"I said yes right away, and that same night I met with Andy, and we pretty much wrote the first song that night.”
Paley — who also has produced records for Brian Wilson, Madonna, the Ramones, Jonathan Richman and Debbie Harry as well as music for the 2005 “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Yellow Album” collection — wasn’t expecting Meyer to help him forge a Gershwin-like team to craft elegantly sophisticated pop songs.
“Ye-ye songs are pretty simple,” he said.
At their first session in 2015, they soon had several songs echoing the vibe of first-wave ye-ye progenitors such as Sylvie Vartan, Francoise Hardy and France Gall as well as male counterparts such as Johnny Hallyday and Serge Gainsbourg.
That’s when Paley broached the next need: a singer for the newly minted songs.
“He asked me, 'Can you sing?'" Meyer said, replicating the head toss and quizzical expression she recalled giving him originally. But Paley loved the direct quality of her vocals on demo versions they created as a test run.
“This isn’t a sound where you want an Aretha — and I love Aretha,” he said. “It doesn’t call for a Whitney Houston.”
On the EP, which is available on iTunes and at CD Baby, Paley framed her endearingly unfussy vocals with vintage-sounding textures in songs that traverse the dramatic twists and turns of
— affairs of the heart.
“C’est un Tombeur (He’s a Player),” for example, is the acerbic response of a woman whose lover likes to play the field. But she’s not fooled: “He thinks he is mysterious and cooler than James Dean/ But I can see clearly through his game.” The lyrics are set to a twangy surf rock-meets-spy movie track that would match well with a mid-1960s Peter Sellers comedy.
Although Meyer, 30, is far too young to have lived through the first wave of ye-ye, she said the music still holds sway in her home country, which she left more than a decade ago. She relocated to Southern California to study at UCLA, where she landed an internship that led to her full-time position at JPL.
She relishes her work with Paley, which was sporadic until she completed her doctoral studies in environmental science. Now they hope to continue writing and recording.
Paley thinks the songs will find homes in film or TV placements; some are already licensed.
Primarily, though, the work has been
—a labor of love — for both.