I encountered Carla Bruni pretty much by chance, because somebody happened to mention listening to the song "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" on the radio and he asked me to translate it since I speak French. I am so glad he asked this favor of me, because the song is now one of my favorites. It is incredibly beautiful in a mellow, hopeful, and loving way. Definitely a song I never mind having stuck in my head. After hearing that, I decided I wanted to hear more of Carla Bruni's work. While "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" is still probably my favorite song on the CD, I love the entire thing. There is some great variety. Some of the music is more upbeat. You can definitely enjoy the CD if you don't speak French (several of my friends are now addicted to her music even though they don't know what she's singing), but if you do speak French, it's an even better treat. I adore her lyrics. They are very catchy, meaningful, and clever. I highly recommend this CD!

Free-spirited and girly, yet sexy and passionate, this is a great album from Carla Bruni. I first heard this in a Youth Hostel in Lyon, and it is still on regular rotation now i am at home. Not only is Carla Bruni a beautiful model, but she is also a talented musician, singing and playing guitar on this album, as well as writing much of it herself. You don't need to know French to appreciate this album, as its (mainly) happy mood will take you to the cafes of France on its own. Well worth searching for.

Whether or not Carla Bruni remains of political interest, chances are you have probably heard her name before. This, her debut album, recorded when she was in her mid-30s, is the French Equivalent of Norah Jones "Come Away With Me". In fact, that Norah Jones connection will haunt you through this recording, as both in song choice and delivery, Bruni is one of those rare animals that get better with repeated listening.

The title song, "Quelqu'un m'a dit" is easily the best thing here. No opening strums, no grand instrumentation - just a womans' husky voice and a guitar set the mood perfectly. This is the ultimate 'wine' album. Listening to the new Vanessa Paradis record, I was reminded that very few French language singers (perhaps for the exception of Charlotte Gainsbourg, and to an extent, Keren Ann) choose to use one genre of music on their albums and conform to it. Bruni is definitely one for this, as her albums' songs all have a 'sameness' to them. This does not mean that they all sound the same - rather, the tempo and musical genre is the same throughout - and this is a good thing.

My personal favorite is the underrated "Le Toi Du Moi", a beautiful song whose word play reminded me very strongly of Jeanne Moreau's "La Tourbillon de la Vie". This track is maddeningly addictive and achingly beautiful, and if you do decide to get this album, I can guarantee that you will be playing this song for years to come.

The tempo only really changes towards the end of the album on one track - "L'Excessive", where they go for a more jazzy, bluesy feel combined with a beat that is definitely more sprightly than anything else here. The inspired closer "The Last Minute" is exactly a minute long - and works great in this context.

Perhaps knowing more about Carla Bruni might affect your purchase decision. Like Milla Jovovich, this is a former supermodel (Guess, Oscar De La Renta, Christian Dior) who was amongst the Top 10 highest paid supermodels in the world, in the 1990s. She has two albums out at the time of writing. This one, and her 2007 release entitled "No Promises" (an interesting but ultimately flawed collection of old-English poems set to blues-jazz). I would suggest getting this one first and discovering a new and exciting world artist.

Many viewers on this page reach here due to their recent discovering of Miss Bruni through her involvement with French President Nic Sarkozy. Its great that this album is at least getting some attention all the years after its' release, because its a fantastic slice of French chanson, and a stellar five star album in every sense of the term. This, along with "Divinidylle" by Vanessa Paradis, should be your essential French language music purchases for this year.

Highly Recommended.

A local radio station (one of the only english-based stations in my area that has the guts to play music not sung in english) one day played "Quelqu'un m'a dit" in the middle of a set of songs. I was hooked! What a great song! I sat through the entire set to hear who the artist was. They finally said her name, and I wrote it down to look up later. Now maybe I'm a bit out of it, but I had never heard the name "Carla Bruni" before that day. Here I thought the radio station had done a great service in introducing an obscure up-and-coming French Bob Dylan to the all too homogenous American airwaves. Images of a bumming coquette bouncing around the cafés of Paris bounced around in my head. What a find! A new voice! A beautiful voice! Très romantique!

So I put her name into Google and was quite surprised. Hm! There must be another "Carla Bruni" out there who's an Italian supermodel. I kept searching for my dream ragamuffin musician but found only lots of nudes of Mrs. Bruni scattering the pages of my Google image search. Then the idealism was shattered like a thin chunk of obsidian: Carla Bruni the musician and Carla Bruni the supermodel were one and the same. Whoa.

I'm not a fan of the fashion industry. I don't want to support supermodels. I don't think a person should have an unfair advantage over others simply because they're beautiful. And I definitely don't want to give such people my money. So I was a little distressed, because the song wouldn't completely leave me. But I also wanted nothing to do with it.

Nonetheless, though Carla Bruni doesn't need a cent of my money or my support (the romantic ragamuffin probably would have), I relented and bought the CD. It was in the "Italian Music" section of a local CD shop. The song was just as great as I remembered it from the radio. And now the big surprise: the rest of the CD is also very good. Not only that, Carla Bruni herself had a major hand in most of the songwriting and wordsmithing on this lovely CD.

"Quelqu'un m'a dit" is simply a great song. Not much else to say there. Most of the album follows the mood of that song. Lots of nylon-stringed guitar, some strings here and there, minimal percussion, and Bruni's smooth voice sticking out over the mix. The music fits the French language perfectly (It's harder to imagine this music sung in Italian). The pace picks up in a few places, such as "L'excessive" with its bouncy jazzy beat. But the mood is mostly mellow, sensuous, and beautiful. The album closes appropriately with "La dernière minute" or "The Last Minute" which is, appropriately, a minute long.

This music apparently took some time to make it to the states. It was orginally released in 2002. That says droves about the english-centric mainstream music industry in the United States.

So in the end I completely relented, and I love the CD, though I'm still not thrilled that she's a supermodel. Though sometimes we forget that things work a little differently over in europe. They definitely have good taste in music.

There is great clarity in this singer. Bruni knows exactly what she wants. And, as we know, she usually gets it.

On the minus side, i could discern little progress in her musical or poetic evolution - the same throaty, self-consciously husky voice, the same cords, musical progressions & song structure, the same half-singing/speaking as in other French and English pieces from previous CDs suggest lack of artistic ambition. I imagine that Bruni unabashedly chooses the hedonic, the sensual and the lyrical/poetic over music itself. That her self-understanding is frozen in some kind of a stasis box. Unlike - say - Sinead O'Connor or Sheryl Crow - she never commits the totality of her inner resources to the song; there is always a distance, a veil between the singer and the song and therefore, between the song and the listener.

Nonetheless.

There are some catchy tunes on this CD, my personal favorite is Raphaël. And L'excessive. And, of course, "La plus belle du quartier"