Albums of Chanson music

The genre was used by French cabaret singers in the late XIX century - first half of XX century. The most famous of them are Aristide Bruant and Mistranslating, who still remain legends of chanson music download. From cabaret this modification moved into a French pop music of the XX century. Along with the genre of cabaret there was a direction of "realistic song", represented almost exclusively by women. The most famous performers were Damian Fréhel and Edith Piaf, who still remain the main reason why people buy chanson music. In 1950s, there formed two main directions of the original French-language songs available to date.

Classical chanson

The first of them is focused on poetic component of the song, and the author him/herself is usually a performer. This genre is associated primarily with the names of:

Maurice Chevalier
Charles Trenet
Edith Piaf

They continued the tradition of the realistic song and became leaders of chanson download. The greatest representatives of this trend are the French Léo Ferré, Georges Brassens and the Belgian Jacques Brel. Charles Aznavour and Salvatore Adamo are also worldwide famous, although their works are closer to the traditional pop song. However, they still crown the charts of chanson music download. Representatives of this poetic and musical direction do fully comply with the term chansonnier.

Representatives of the so-called "new chanson" (nouvelle chanson), or "new scene" (nouvelle scène française) are younger generation of French artists. In their works, they do not refuse to use the latest techniques of modern easy listening, including elements of rock, Latin, and various other ethnic rhythms, electronic music, and so on. However, they are still very demanding in respect to their lyrics. Start of the "new chanson" is associated with the name of Dominique A (one of leaders of chanson download of the last decade of the twentieth century). Among popular singers, who came to the stage in the XXI century, are

Benjamin Bёle
Coralie Clément
Keren Ann
Olivia Ruiz and many others.

Recently, Art Com label released the collection called Chanson Française (The Most Famous French Songs), where it gathered the best chanson MP3s in FLAC quality. You can buy it on numerous sites and get to know chanson music better.

Pop direction

Another direction of French song of the second half of the XX century is a pop song performed by chanteurs (singers). Representatives of this trend are often the singers of songs of their own composition, but due to the simplification of the poetic content they are not chansonniers in the fullest sense of the word. The popular performers of French pop songs are Yves Montand, Henri Salvador, Mireille Mathieu, Enrico Macias, Joe Dassin, Delilah, Patricia Kaas, Lara Fabian, Mylène Farmer. Their songs are available on many sites, but not all of them provide their tracks in MP3, M4A and FLAC formats to preserve lossless quality.

The border between these two directions is quite conventional, and not all French-speaking singers can be unambiguously attributed to one or the other direction. Outside the French-speaking countries all artists singing in French are often called chansonnier.