Post by davidhr on Aug 8, 2017 8:45:32 GMT -5
A VERY busy week for Lara and her fans, probably the busiest we will see until the album release in October. As you probably know, Lara’s single was released on Friday, along with the tracklist for the new album (with pre-ordering available from iTunes and amazon). In addition, tickets became available for the shows in the U.S. Furthermore, Lara’s URl site, www.larafabian.com, is now open. And the music video for the single was announced. So, a very busy week indeed! We’ll break it into the main topics.
1) The Single: Growing Wings
The reception the single received from Lara’s fans was generally positive. In particular, they seemed to appreciate Lara’s “new sound”, allaying fears that they would want Lara to do the ‘same old thing’. People felt the song was catchy and ethereal, with strong lyrics carried by Lara’s beautiful voice. The primary complaint was that the song was too short (just under 3 minutes). . The song has placed on iTunes charts in Lara’s usual locations of fan interest: as of one point in time on Sunday it was #44 in France, #87 in Belgium. It was also #75 in Finland.
The single is being played on several media platforms in France and Belgium, e.g., deltafm.fr, nostalgie.be. In addition, it is (potentially) available on Napster, Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music, Qobuz, etc. (although people in some countries complained early on that it wasn’t (yet) there). Similar situations occurred with respect to downloading the song on iTunes in certain countries (e.g., Czech Republic, Mexico) which are gradually being worked out.
Charts in France had a brief discussion of it (http://www.chartsinfrance.net/Lara-Fabian/news-104786.html); here is the relevant portion:
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Good news: "Camouflage" is already available for pre-order on various commercial platforms. The appointment is fixed to October 6 for discovering it in its entirety! To keep her audience patient until then, Lara Fabian unveiled today a first excerpt entitled "Growing Wings". From the first few seconds, the piano chords confer on this ballad a dramatic dimension. Without forcing, Lara Fabian touches the emotion on a beautiful introspective text where she decides to no longer ask questions and to move forward. "I'm growing wings now," she repeats softly, ready to make the "leap of faith." A superb proposal! Lara Fabian moreover unveiled the dates of her next world tour, which will pass through Miami before stopping in New York, Los Angeles, Kiev, Munich, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona or Prague. A date is also scheduled in Paris: appointment June 16, 2018 at the Zenith!
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Leaving aside the question of whether this is a ‘piano ballad’ (there is piano music at the beginning and end), a favorable review.
2) The Album:
Along with the song, people could pre-order the full album for digital download, to be available on its release date, which is now firmly established as October 6th. The CD will be available on that date as well. Lara’s team indicated that Lara had asked them to also provide a vinyl version, which will probably be available only during the tour, at the merchandising desk. Note that the pre-orders on digital platforms include the download of the single "Growing Wings", and also of any other future singles to be released before the album release. Pre-ordering has been quite successful; here’s a list of its position visa vi other pre-ordered pop albums as of Sunday:
iTunes – pre-order category: France: 1; Belgium: 1; Netherlands: 1; Switzerland: 4;
Hungary: 5; Russia: 9; Taiwan: 11; Finland: 13; Poland: 21; Sweden: 26; Spain: 51;
Germany: 52; Italy: 53; U.S.: 76; Turkey: 92; UK : 101
Amazon - (France) : 3 (in Téléchargement de Musique > Albums à télécharger > Pop); Amazon (US) - #39 (in Digital Music > Albums > Jazz)
One can see that all the work Lara has put in going to these various countries is paying off, once a generally accessible (English) language album is offered to them. It certainly bodes well for its future success.
As quoted on the Larafabianweb site, Lara’s Team had the following statement concerning the album as a whole, and an upcoming remix:
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"CAMOUFLAGE" will be an album of 12 songs. And these are of different styles and moods. Some ballads, some more upbeat, some with powerful vocals, others more fragile interpretations. Depending on what you like in Lara's music, you will find various options. ;-)
Soon, the "GROWING WINGS" remix by Offer Nissim (https://www.youtube.com/user/OfferNissimOfficial - soundcloud.com/offer-nissim) will be released.
The song has been distributed to all the radios through the world for a broadcast on the air.
Team Lara.
----------------------------------------------------
Israeli DJ Offer Nissim is known for his work with Madonna, Rihanna, Cristina Aguilera..)
They also indicated that there will be one unique version of the album – there won’t be an additional, ‘box set’ version with a different song selection, as there was for “Ma vie dans la tienne”.
Making it available for pre-order also revealed the full tracklist of songs with those ‘different styles and moods’, as well as the timing of all the songs on the album.
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1. Growing Wings 2:57
2. Chameleon 3:19
3. If I Let You Love Me 3:35
4. Choose What You Love Most 3:53
5. We Are the Flyers 4:05
6. Painting in the Rain 3:27
7. Camouflage 3:11
8. I’m Breakable 2:35
9. Keep the Animals Away 3:32
10. We Are the Storm 3:39
11. Perfect 3:00
12. Community 3:16
----------------------------------------------------------------
Not only was the single short in duration, the album consists primarily of relatively short songs, which may be part of the ‘electro-pop’ sound approach (see below). The album as a whole runs about 41 minutes. This can be compared with Lara’s other studio albums. Here is such a list, in the order in which they were released. Presented is the total running time of each album, and the number of songs it included:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Lara Fabian (French): 39 minutes (10 songs)
(2) Carpe Diem : 58 minutes (13 songs)
(3) Pure: 49 minutes (11 songs)
(4) Lara Fabian (English): 57 minutes (13 songs)
(European version with Spanish songs, 75 minutes, 17 songs)
(5) Nue: 74 minutes (14 songs) (including the long piano piece at the end);
57 minutes (13 songs) without it
(6) A Wonderful Life: 50 minutes (12 songs)
(7) Neuf: 43 minutes (11 songs)
(8) Toutes les femmes en moi: 57 minutes (13 songs)
(9) Every Woman in Me: 37 minutes (11 songs)
(10) Mademoiselle Zhivago: 59 minutes (13 songs) (Russian version)
56 minutes (12 songs) (French version)
(11) Le Secret: 2CDs (1) 38 minutes + (2) 43 minutes = 81 minutes (17 songs)
(12) Ma vie dans la tienne: 52 minutes (13 songs)
(13) Camouflage: 41 minutes (12 songs)
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One can see that in total running time, Camouflage is 11th out of the 13 studio albums. It is ahead of only EWIM and Lara’s first self-titled French album. Of course, album length and quality are not necessarily correlated.
Another time metric we can consider is the average length of song. Here is that list, now given starting with the album having the longest average song:
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1) Mademoiselle Zhivago (French version) 4.7 minutes
2) Le Secret 4.6 minutes (omitting the musical interludes)
3) Mademoiselle Zhivago (Russian version) 4.5 minutes
4) Carpe Diem 4.5 minutes
5) Pure 4.5 minutes
6) Lara Fabian (English) 4.4 minutes (both US and European releases)
7) Nue 4.4 minutes (omitting the last piano piece)
8) Toutes les femmes en moi 4.4 minutes
9) A Wonderful Life 4.2 minutes
10) Ma vie dans la tienne 4.0 minutes
11) Neuf 3.9 minutes
12) Lara Fabian (French) 3.9 minutes
13) Camouflage 3.4 minutes
14) Every Woman in Me 3.4 minutes
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Here we see Camouflage comes in tied for the shortest average song with EWIM (which was not a full scale release), a full minute shorter than her most popular albums in terms of CD sales (#s 4-7). Short songs are somewhat characteristic of ‘electro-pop’; for example, if one takes the top 10 Electropop-Synthpop bands/artists as determined by ranker.com who have released albums in the last three years, and see what the average length songs are on those albums, one finds it is 3.7 minutes (with a standard deviation among them of only 0.1 minutes). This is shorter than the songs on all of Lara’s albums except Camouflage and EWIM (although they are shorter still). It is not mandatory: the ‘Indie pop’ star (if one wants to characterize her) Lana Del Rey averages 4.5 minutes/song on ‘Lust for Life’, the top album on last week’s Billboard’s charts. With respect to the total album length, those ten albums average 42 minutes long, pretty much in line with Camouflage.
So this would seem to be a characteristic of Lara’s “new sound” that we presumably have to get used to, for as long as she chooses to employ it. Again, song length doesn’t correlate with quality, any more than album length does, so it doesn’t mean we won’t appreciate these songs, but we may have to change our expectations; the average for albums over her career has been 4.2 minutes/song. It will be interesting to see if it carries over to the next French album. Note that her last French album, ‘Ma vie dans la tienne’, had songs that were longer, and at 4 min/song they were the same average length as songs on the latest (English) album of Celine Dion (“Loved Me Back to Life”) as well as Adele’s “25”.
3) The Tour:
As noted above, the ticket offices opened for the five shows in the U.S. on Friday. The ‘Shows’ link on Lara’s URL can be used to buy tickets for these and other concerts [as well as the 'Events' page on her FB site, except for the Chicago show for some reason]. On the Los Angeles site it indicates what is probably true for the whole tour: “This concert is 1 hour and 30 minutes long with no intermission. It is suitable for any age and is performed in English and other languages.” To help fill these seats Lara is appealing to the French audience in the U.S. As the larafabianweb site pointed out, news of the concert in Florida was disseminated by ‘French Morning’, the “news site leader for francophones and franophiles living in the United States” (https://frenchmorning.com/lara-fabian-lance-nouvelle-tournee-a-miami-beach-2-fevrier-2018/?cx_frg_widget_id=trending&cx_NavSource=noncx_rec&cx_rec_mode=random). Here’s the translation:
----------------------------------------------------
Lara Fabian packs her suitcases to the Fillmore Miami Beach on February 2, 2018 as part of her new international tour "Camouflage", which will take her to several American cities. Tickets will go on sale starting August 4th.
The event will mark her first performance in the "Magic City" and also the first stage of her tour. During this singing tour, she will promote "Camouflage", an album that makes up a beautiful part of the English-language repertoire of the multilingual French-speaking star. Co-written by Lara Fabian, Sharon Vaughn and Moh Denebi (also producer), it’s composed of twelve English songs. [The tour will include songs such as]* "A wonderful life" and "I will love again". The latter was number 1 of the U.S Billboard hot dance chart hit, ranking as the most popular music in nightclubs in 2000. August 4 will also mark the release of her new single "Growing wings".
----------------------------------------------------
*[They screwed up their copy, but the point gets across…]. A similar article was also posted for the New York show, at
frenchmorning.com/lara-fabian-concert-a-new-york-2018/
Tickets are still available for the different US locations, although a number of good seats have been sold.
Tickets will be sold for the show in Brussels (June 9) starting on August 9th. Interestingly, there is even an article about it in Dutch for the Flemish portion of Belgium, perhaps another bonus arising from the attention Lara has paid to ‘that other side of the house’ via her duet with Natalia (thanks to the larafabianweb site for the link) (http://www.concertnews.be/concertaankondiging.php?id=7975&kop=Lara%20Fabian&naam=2018-06-09). The translation is provided here, primarily because what it says is similar to the promotion in every country where concerts are to be held:
-----------------------------------------------
New Event Lara Fabian
Vorst Nationaal Brusselzaterdag 9 juni 2018 20: 00
In February 2018, Lara Fabian is taking her long-awaited international tour in Miami. She then draws through the US and is doing New York, Los Angeles and Washington. Lara Fabian continues her tour in Europe, with performances in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Prague, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Vienna and, of course, Brussels!
During her Camouflage World Tour, Lara Fabian presents her English-language repertoire that she has released in the US since 1999. Her first, titled album was written and produced by the greatest names of the music industry, such as Glen Ballard and Walter Affanasief, and contains songs that performed particularly well in the charts, such as "I Will Love Again" (No. 1 in Hot Dance Chart). Other songs like 'Adagio', 'Love By Grace' and 'Broken Vow' became hits in different countries and were covered by numerous artists.
In 2004, Lara Fabian released her second English album, A Wonderful Life. There are songs like 'Review My Kisses', written by Desmond Child, 'I Guess I Loved You' and 'No Big Deal'. The song "I Am Who I Am" became a real nightclub hit in a remix by Hex Hector [sic – as we know, this was from the first album].
On October 6, Lara releases Camouflage, her first English album in 10 years. She wrote and compiled herself on this album, along with Sharon Vaughn and Moh Denebi. The latter is also the producer of the new album (Stockholm / Los Angeles). With Camouflage, Lara Fabian again connects with the pop universe of her English-language work and the current pop sounds of Moh Denebi. The song 'Growing Wings' is the first single of this album.
During her Camouflage World Tour, which will also impress with innovative visual effects, Lara Fabian presents both songs from her new album and other English-language work and her biggest hits.
An appointment so that you should not miss, on Saturday June 9, 2018 in Vorst Nationaal! [Forest National]
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Lara’s Team had a few other comments concerning the tour:
**No other shows are added for the moment in the U.S.
** They are still waiting for Brazilian concert organizers to have dates in Brazil (and, if serious proposals are received it will be for two to three shows; the “10 shows” that had been mentioned in an article was apparently a misunderstanding on the part of the journalist).
**No info yet on other ticketing dates. They are sharing the info as it arrives.
**When someone wrote that Lara owes Athens a concert, they responded that “Athens owes Lara a concert too! A mutual promise…patience.” You may remember that last September Lara’s concert there was rained out, but contributing to the problem was poor organization by the promoters (http://www.protothema.gr/culture/music/article/612945/i-vrohi-mataiose-tin-sunaulia-tis-lara-fabian/).
4) The URL site:
Also as noted, another new event this past week was the re-opening of Lara’s URL site (www.larafabian.com). Designed by the Odacity team, it is attractive and easy to use; so far it is devoted primarily to the new album. In the coming days and weeks, apparently, it will have more features, visuals, videos, an online store and other apps. At the moment it is only in English, but a French version is supposed to come online soon.
One especially nice thing, which you don’t see on a lot of artist websites, is the contact information, so one can get in touch with Lara’s management, booking, and press/media, if not Lara herself (who can be reached only via a comment left on her FB site).
One suggestion offered here (once again) is that it include a full discography for Lara; that is almost ‘de rigueur’ for an artist’s web site. If Lara’s people don’t want to make the effort to handle sales of the physical CDs directly from that site, which would require their people to deal with it, they could at least put specific links for each album to locations where the CDs could be obtained worldwide (e.g., on amazon.fr, FNAC, etc.). While CDs may be ‘old technology’, for many people around the world access to digital downloads of Lara’s songs is limited; the CDs may well be their only option, and they may need some help in finding them.
5) The music video
And then there was the fiasco of the music video for ‘Growing Wings’. Yesterday morning Lara or her Team posted on her FB site “Stand by for the music video of "Growing Wings"!...”. I’m sure they have quickly come to regret that announcement, for at the time of this writing, more than 24 hours later, it still hasn’t appeared. People kept looking throughout the day, and if they were ‘standing’ they got very tired…
The ‘explanation’ given only made things worse. It was reported that Odacity later said it was never meant to be on the internet/youtube on August 7th, and it was sent to music channels instead; it would be on youtube later. . However, as others have pointed out, this was not the original plan, for Lara’s youtube channel, in asking people to sign up, said it was going to be there August 7th. And why say “stand by” on Lara’s FB site when it was not going to show up in the place that people were “standing”, i.e., that site? Speculation is that Lara may have found something she didn’t like in the video, and it has to be redone. Or, they decided that once the video is made widely available, there may well be less reason to download the song itself (though the reverse could be true – people may be encouraged to download the song once seeing the video). Whatever the reason, it left numerous disgruntled fans, some of whom complained directly on Lara’s site; clearly they should have been informed as the day progressed that there would be a delay in their seeing it. One presumes it will eventually appear…and if the video is very good, this will not be remembered.
In other news – and yes, there was some completely independent news – you may remember that back in mid-May, while in Los Angeles, Lara sang the title song ‘Remember Me’ for the indie movie “Cello’. You can hear a bit of Lara’s singing in a new video associated with it, at
www.facebook.com/cellomovie/videos/701865469997542/
The info associated with this says,
“The music of Cello The Movie tells a story of its own. A beautiful journey we invite you all to experience with us.
*Music by Randy Kerber featuring Lara Fabian and Lynn Harrell
Original Motion Picture and Soundtrack coming soon!
www.cellomovie.com"
They also added the following comment, “We are so honored to have Lara Fabian lend her talents to the Cello The Movie soundtrack. We wish her much success on her new single released today!
Félicitation
www.cellomovie.com"
Interesting photo(s) of the week [and, yes, we still have time for those ,], from the larafabianweb site, taken of Lara at her concert in the Cesme Open Air Theater (8/26/16):
www.facebook.com/larafabianweb/photos/a.247913198557556.83420.246805652001644/1853065911375602/?type=3&theater
and from the Lara Fabian Connecting People site, a wonderful drawing for the tour
vk.com/lf_cp?z=photo-121236_456244309%2Falbum-121236_143198993%2Frev
In the next week, we can expect to see the music video (it may already be available by the time you read this); and perhaps even a remix of ‘Growing Wings’. While August is a slow month for publicity, eventually the promotion of the album will pick up, and reportedly it will be especially active in the U.S. and Germany, both countries in which 5 concerts are scheduled. (It is exciting that Lara has all these countries she can now directly access with this English album, due to the effort she has put in going to different places over the years). And Lara’s people will be getting a better read on how well the new single is being received, both from the public and the media. We wish them well!
David
1) The Single: Growing Wings
The reception the single received from Lara’s fans was generally positive. In particular, they seemed to appreciate Lara’s “new sound”, allaying fears that they would want Lara to do the ‘same old thing’. People felt the song was catchy and ethereal, with strong lyrics carried by Lara’s beautiful voice. The primary complaint was that the song was too short (just under 3 minutes). . The song has placed on iTunes charts in Lara’s usual locations of fan interest: as of one point in time on Sunday it was #44 in France, #87 in Belgium. It was also #75 in Finland.
The single is being played on several media platforms in France and Belgium, e.g., deltafm.fr, nostalgie.be. In addition, it is (potentially) available on Napster, Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music, Qobuz, etc. (although people in some countries complained early on that it wasn’t (yet) there). Similar situations occurred with respect to downloading the song on iTunes in certain countries (e.g., Czech Republic, Mexico) which are gradually being worked out.
Charts in France had a brief discussion of it (http://www.chartsinfrance.net/Lara-Fabian/news-104786.html); here is the relevant portion:
-------------------------------------------------------
Good news: "Camouflage" is already available for pre-order on various commercial platforms. The appointment is fixed to October 6 for discovering it in its entirety! To keep her audience patient until then, Lara Fabian unveiled today a first excerpt entitled "Growing Wings". From the first few seconds, the piano chords confer on this ballad a dramatic dimension. Without forcing, Lara Fabian touches the emotion on a beautiful introspective text where she decides to no longer ask questions and to move forward. "I'm growing wings now," she repeats softly, ready to make the "leap of faith." A superb proposal! Lara Fabian moreover unveiled the dates of her next world tour, which will pass through Miami before stopping in New York, Los Angeles, Kiev, Munich, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona or Prague. A date is also scheduled in Paris: appointment June 16, 2018 at the Zenith!
---------------------------------------------------------
Leaving aside the question of whether this is a ‘piano ballad’ (there is piano music at the beginning and end), a favorable review.
2) The Album:
Along with the song, people could pre-order the full album for digital download, to be available on its release date, which is now firmly established as October 6th. The CD will be available on that date as well. Lara’s team indicated that Lara had asked them to also provide a vinyl version, which will probably be available only during the tour, at the merchandising desk. Note that the pre-orders on digital platforms include the download of the single "Growing Wings", and also of any other future singles to be released before the album release. Pre-ordering has been quite successful; here’s a list of its position visa vi other pre-ordered pop albums as of Sunday:
iTunes – pre-order category: France: 1; Belgium: 1; Netherlands: 1; Switzerland: 4;
Hungary: 5; Russia: 9; Taiwan: 11; Finland: 13; Poland: 21; Sweden: 26; Spain: 51;
Germany: 52; Italy: 53; U.S.: 76; Turkey: 92; UK : 101
Amazon - (France) : 3 (in Téléchargement de Musique > Albums à télécharger > Pop); Amazon (US) - #39 (in Digital Music > Albums > Jazz)
One can see that all the work Lara has put in going to these various countries is paying off, once a generally accessible (English) language album is offered to them. It certainly bodes well for its future success.
As quoted on the Larafabianweb site, Lara’s Team had the following statement concerning the album as a whole, and an upcoming remix:
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"CAMOUFLAGE" will be an album of 12 songs. And these are of different styles and moods. Some ballads, some more upbeat, some with powerful vocals, others more fragile interpretations. Depending on what you like in Lara's music, you will find various options. ;-)
Soon, the "GROWING WINGS" remix by Offer Nissim (https://www.youtube.com/user/OfferNissimOfficial - soundcloud.com/offer-nissim) will be released.
The song has been distributed to all the radios through the world for a broadcast on the air.
Team Lara.
----------------------------------------------------
Israeli DJ Offer Nissim is known for his work with Madonna, Rihanna, Cristina Aguilera..)
They also indicated that there will be one unique version of the album – there won’t be an additional, ‘box set’ version with a different song selection, as there was for “Ma vie dans la tienne”.
Making it available for pre-order also revealed the full tracklist of songs with those ‘different styles and moods’, as well as the timing of all the songs on the album.
----------------------------------------------------------------
1. Growing Wings 2:57
2. Chameleon 3:19
3. If I Let You Love Me 3:35
4. Choose What You Love Most 3:53
5. We Are the Flyers 4:05
6. Painting in the Rain 3:27
7. Camouflage 3:11
8. I’m Breakable 2:35
9. Keep the Animals Away 3:32
10. We Are the Storm 3:39
11. Perfect 3:00
12. Community 3:16
----------------------------------------------------------------
Not only was the single short in duration, the album consists primarily of relatively short songs, which may be part of the ‘electro-pop’ sound approach (see below). The album as a whole runs about 41 minutes. This can be compared with Lara’s other studio albums. Here is such a list, in the order in which they were released. Presented is the total running time of each album, and the number of songs it included:
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(1) Lara Fabian (French): 39 minutes (10 songs)
(2) Carpe Diem : 58 minutes (13 songs)
(3) Pure: 49 minutes (11 songs)
(4) Lara Fabian (English): 57 minutes (13 songs)
(European version with Spanish songs, 75 minutes, 17 songs)
(5) Nue: 74 minutes (14 songs) (including the long piano piece at the end);
57 minutes (13 songs) without it
(6) A Wonderful Life: 50 minutes (12 songs)
(7) Neuf: 43 minutes (11 songs)
(8) Toutes les femmes en moi: 57 minutes (13 songs)
(9) Every Woman in Me: 37 minutes (11 songs)
(10) Mademoiselle Zhivago: 59 minutes (13 songs) (Russian version)
56 minutes (12 songs) (French version)
(11) Le Secret: 2CDs (1) 38 minutes + (2) 43 minutes = 81 minutes (17 songs)
(12) Ma vie dans la tienne: 52 minutes (13 songs)
(13) Camouflage: 41 minutes (12 songs)
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One can see that in total running time, Camouflage is 11th out of the 13 studio albums. It is ahead of only EWIM and Lara’s first self-titled French album. Of course, album length and quality are not necessarily correlated.
Another time metric we can consider is the average length of song. Here is that list, now given starting with the album having the longest average song:
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1) Mademoiselle Zhivago (French version) 4.7 minutes
2) Le Secret 4.6 minutes (omitting the musical interludes)
3) Mademoiselle Zhivago (Russian version) 4.5 minutes
4) Carpe Diem 4.5 minutes
5) Pure 4.5 minutes
6) Lara Fabian (English) 4.4 minutes (both US and European releases)
7) Nue 4.4 minutes (omitting the last piano piece)
8) Toutes les femmes en moi 4.4 minutes
9) A Wonderful Life 4.2 minutes
10) Ma vie dans la tienne 4.0 minutes
11) Neuf 3.9 minutes
12) Lara Fabian (French) 3.9 minutes
13) Camouflage 3.4 minutes
14) Every Woman in Me 3.4 minutes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here we see Camouflage comes in tied for the shortest average song with EWIM (which was not a full scale release), a full minute shorter than her most popular albums in terms of CD sales (#s 4-7). Short songs are somewhat characteristic of ‘electro-pop’; for example, if one takes the top 10 Electropop-Synthpop bands/artists as determined by ranker.com who have released albums in the last three years, and see what the average length songs are on those albums, one finds it is 3.7 minutes (with a standard deviation among them of only 0.1 minutes). This is shorter than the songs on all of Lara’s albums except Camouflage and EWIM (although they are shorter still). It is not mandatory: the ‘Indie pop’ star (if one wants to characterize her) Lana Del Rey averages 4.5 minutes/song on ‘Lust for Life’, the top album on last week’s Billboard’s charts. With respect to the total album length, those ten albums average 42 minutes long, pretty much in line with Camouflage.
So this would seem to be a characteristic of Lara’s “new sound” that we presumably have to get used to, for as long as she chooses to employ it. Again, song length doesn’t correlate with quality, any more than album length does, so it doesn’t mean we won’t appreciate these songs, but we may have to change our expectations; the average for albums over her career has been 4.2 minutes/song. It will be interesting to see if it carries over to the next French album. Note that her last French album, ‘Ma vie dans la tienne’, had songs that were longer, and at 4 min/song they were the same average length as songs on the latest (English) album of Celine Dion (“Loved Me Back to Life”) as well as Adele’s “25”.
3) The Tour:
As noted above, the ticket offices opened for the five shows in the U.S. on Friday. The ‘Shows’ link on Lara’s URL can be used to buy tickets for these and other concerts [as well as the 'Events' page on her FB site, except for the Chicago show for some reason]. On the Los Angeles site it indicates what is probably true for the whole tour: “This concert is 1 hour and 30 minutes long with no intermission. It is suitable for any age and is performed in English and other languages.” To help fill these seats Lara is appealing to the French audience in the U.S. As the larafabianweb site pointed out, news of the concert in Florida was disseminated by ‘French Morning’, the “news site leader for francophones and franophiles living in the United States” (https://frenchmorning.com/lara-fabian-lance-nouvelle-tournee-a-miami-beach-2-fevrier-2018/?cx_frg_widget_id=trending&cx_NavSource=noncx_rec&cx_rec_mode=random). Here’s the translation:
----------------------------------------------------
Lara Fabian packs her suitcases to the Fillmore Miami Beach on February 2, 2018 as part of her new international tour "Camouflage", which will take her to several American cities. Tickets will go on sale starting August 4th.
The event will mark her first performance in the "Magic City" and also the first stage of her tour. During this singing tour, she will promote "Camouflage", an album that makes up a beautiful part of the English-language repertoire of the multilingual French-speaking star. Co-written by Lara Fabian, Sharon Vaughn and Moh Denebi (also producer), it’s composed of twelve English songs. [The tour will include songs such as]* "A wonderful life" and "I will love again". The latter was number 1 of the U.S Billboard hot dance chart hit, ranking as the most popular music in nightclubs in 2000. August 4 will also mark the release of her new single "Growing wings".
----------------------------------------------------
*[They screwed up their copy, but the point gets across…]. A similar article was also posted for the New York show, at
frenchmorning.com/lara-fabian-concert-a-new-york-2018/
Tickets are still available for the different US locations, although a number of good seats have been sold.
Tickets will be sold for the show in Brussels (June 9) starting on August 9th. Interestingly, there is even an article about it in Dutch for the Flemish portion of Belgium, perhaps another bonus arising from the attention Lara has paid to ‘that other side of the house’ via her duet with Natalia (thanks to the larafabianweb site for the link) (http://www.concertnews.be/concertaankondiging.php?id=7975&kop=Lara%20Fabian&naam=2018-06-09). The translation is provided here, primarily because what it says is similar to the promotion in every country where concerts are to be held:
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New Event Lara Fabian
Vorst Nationaal Brusselzaterdag 9 juni 2018 20: 00
In February 2018, Lara Fabian is taking her long-awaited international tour in Miami. She then draws through the US and is doing New York, Los Angeles and Washington. Lara Fabian continues her tour in Europe, with performances in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Prague, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Vienna and, of course, Brussels!
During her Camouflage World Tour, Lara Fabian presents her English-language repertoire that she has released in the US since 1999. Her first, titled album was written and produced by the greatest names of the music industry, such as Glen Ballard and Walter Affanasief, and contains songs that performed particularly well in the charts, such as "I Will Love Again" (No. 1 in Hot Dance Chart). Other songs like 'Adagio', 'Love By Grace' and 'Broken Vow' became hits in different countries and were covered by numerous artists.
In 2004, Lara Fabian released her second English album, A Wonderful Life. There are songs like 'Review My Kisses', written by Desmond Child, 'I Guess I Loved You' and 'No Big Deal'. The song "I Am Who I Am" became a real nightclub hit in a remix by Hex Hector [sic – as we know, this was from the first album].
On October 6, Lara releases Camouflage, her first English album in 10 years. She wrote and compiled herself on this album, along with Sharon Vaughn and Moh Denebi. The latter is also the producer of the new album (Stockholm / Los Angeles). With Camouflage, Lara Fabian again connects with the pop universe of her English-language work and the current pop sounds of Moh Denebi. The song 'Growing Wings' is the first single of this album.
During her Camouflage World Tour, which will also impress with innovative visual effects, Lara Fabian presents both songs from her new album and other English-language work and her biggest hits.
An appointment so that you should not miss, on Saturday June 9, 2018 in Vorst Nationaal! [Forest National]
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Lara’s Team had a few other comments concerning the tour:
**No other shows are added for the moment in the U.S.
** They are still waiting for Brazilian concert organizers to have dates in Brazil (and, if serious proposals are received it will be for two to three shows; the “10 shows” that had been mentioned in an article was apparently a misunderstanding on the part of the journalist).
**No info yet on other ticketing dates. They are sharing the info as it arrives.
**When someone wrote that Lara owes Athens a concert, they responded that “Athens owes Lara a concert too! A mutual promise…patience.” You may remember that last September Lara’s concert there was rained out, but contributing to the problem was poor organization by the promoters (http://www.protothema.gr/culture/music/article/612945/i-vrohi-mataiose-tin-sunaulia-tis-lara-fabian/).
4) The URL site:
Also as noted, another new event this past week was the re-opening of Lara’s URL site (www.larafabian.com). Designed by the Odacity team, it is attractive and easy to use; so far it is devoted primarily to the new album. In the coming days and weeks, apparently, it will have more features, visuals, videos, an online store and other apps. At the moment it is only in English, but a French version is supposed to come online soon.
One especially nice thing, which you don’t see on a lot of artist websites, is the contact information, so one can get in touch with Lara’s management, booking, and press/media, if not Lara herself (who can be reached only via a comment left on her FB site).
One suggestion offered here (once again) is that it include a full discography for Lara; that is almost ‘de rigueur’ for an artist’s web site. If Lara’s people don’t want to make the effort to handle sales of the physical CDs directly from that site, which would require their people to deal with it, they could at least put specific links for each album to locations where the CDs could be obtained worldwide (e.g., on amazon.fr, FNAC, etc.). While CDs may be ‘old technology’, for many people around the world access to digital downloads of Lara’s songs is limited; the CDs may well be their only option, and they may need some help in finding them.
5) The music video
And then there was the fiasco of the music video for ‘Growing Wings’. Yesterday morning Lara or her Team posted on her FB site “Stand by for the music video of "Growing Wings"!...”. I’m sure they have quickly come to regret that announcement, for at the time of this writing, more than 24 hours later, it still hasn’t appeared. People kept looking throughout the day, and if they were ‘standing’ they got very tired…
The ‘explanation’ given only made things worse. It was reported that Odacity later said it was never meant to be on the internet/youtube on August 7th, and it was sent to music channels instead; it would be on youtube later. . However, as others have pointed out, this was not the original plan, for Lara’s youtube channel, in asking people to sign up, said it was going to be there August 7th. And why say “stand by” on Lara’s FB site when it was not going to show up in the place that people were “standing”, i.e., that site? Speculation is that Lara may have found something she didn’t like in the video, and it has to be redone. Or, they decided that once the video is made widely available, there may well be less reason to download the song itself (though the reverse could be true – people may be encouraged to download the song once seeing the video). Whatever the reason, it left numerous disgruntled fans, some of whom complained directly on Lara’s site; clearly they should have been informed as the day progressed that there would be a delay in their seeing it. One presumes it will eventually appear…and if the video is very good, this will not be remembered.
In other news – and yes, there was some completely independent news – you may remember that back in mid-May, while in Los Angeles, Lara sang the title song ‘Remember Me’ for the indie movie “Cello’. You can hear a bit of Lara’s singing in a new video associated with it, at
www.facebook.com/cellomovie/videos/701865469997542/
The info associated with this says,
“The music of Cello The Movie tells a story of its own. A beautiful journey we invite you all to experience with us.
*Music by Randy Kerber featuring Lara Fabian and Lynn Harrell
Original Motion Picture and Soundtrack coming soon!
www.cellomovie.com"
They also added the following comment, “We are so honored to have Lara Fabian lend her talents to the Cello The Movie soundtrack. We wish her much success on her new single released today!
Félicitation
www.cellomovie.com"
Interesting photo(s) of the week [and, yes, we still have time for those
,], from the larafabianweb site, taken of Lara at her concert in the Cesme Open Air Theater (8/26/16):www.facebook.com/larafabianweb/photos/a.247913198557556.83420.246805652001644/1853065911375602/?type=3&theater
and from the Lara Fabian Connecting People site, a wonderful drawing for the tour
vk.com/lf_cp?z=photo-121236_456244309%2Falbum-121236_143198993%2Frev
In the next week, we can expect to see the music video (it may already be available by the time you read this); and perhaps even a remix of ‘Growing Wings’. While August is a slow month for publicity, eventually the promotion of the album will pick up, and reportedly it will be especially active in the U.S. and Germany, both countries in which 5 concerts are scheduled. (It is exciting that Lara has all these countries she can now directly access with this English album, due to the effort she has put in going to different places over the years). And Lara’s people will be getting a better read on how well the new single is being received, both from the public and the media. We wish them well!
David
