French popular music is a music of France

Music of France

France has a wide variety of indigenous folk music, as well as styles played by immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the field of classical music, France has produced a number of legendary composers, while modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, techno/funk,...

 belonging to any of a number of musical styles

Music genre

A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...

 that are accessible to the general public

Mainstream

Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....

 and mostly distributed commercially. It stands in contrast to French classical music

French classical music

French classical music began with the sacred music of the Roman Catholic Church, with written records predating the reign of Charlemagne. It includes all of the major genres of sacred and secular, instrumental and vocal music...

, which historically was the music of elites or the upper strata of society, and traditional French folk music

French folk music

As Europe experienced a wave of roots revivals in the 1950s and 60s, France found its regional culture reviving traditional music. Brittany, Limousin, Gascony, Corsica and Auvergne were among the regions that experienced a notable resurgence in the popularity of folk music...

 which was shared non-commercially. It is sometimes abbreviated to French pop music, although French pop music

French pop music

French pop music is the pop music sung in the French language. It is usually performed by singers from France, Belgium, Quebec, or any of the other francophone areas of the world...

 is more often used for a narrower branch of popular music.

The late 19th century saw the dawn of the music hall

Music hall

Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

 when Yvette Guilbert

Yvette Guilbert

Yvette Guilbert was a French cabaret singer and actress of the Belle Époque.-Biography:...

 was a major star. The era lasted through to the 1930s and saw the likes of Félix Mayol

Félix Mayol

Félix Mayol was a French singer and entertainer.-Career:Mayol was born in Toulon, France. His parents were both amateur singers and actors, who arranged for Felix to make his debut stage at six years of age....

, Lucienne Boyer

Lucienne Boyer

Lucienne Boyer was a French diseuse and singer, best known for her song "Parlez-moi d'amour". Her impresario was Bruno Coquatrix.-Early career:...

,
Marie-Louise Damien

Marie-Louise Damien

Marie-Louise Damien was a French singer and actress better known by the stage name Damia.-Robert Hollard:...

, Marie Dubas

Marie Dubas

Marie Dubas was a music-hall singer, diseuse and comedienne.Born in Paris, France, Marie Dubas began her career as a stage actress but became famous as a singer. Using the great Yvette Guilbert as her model, Dubas started singing in the small cabarets of Montmartre mixing comedy into her routine...

, Fréhel

Fréhel

Fréhel was a French singer and actress.-Biography:Born in Paris, France to a poor and dysfunctional Breton family, Marguerite Boulc'h was a child left to a life on the streets in the dark side of Paris...

, Georges Guibourg

Georges Guibourg

Georges Guibourg was a French singer, author, writer, playwright, and actor, George Guibourg, alias Georgius, alias Theodore Crapulet, was one of the most popular and versatile performers in Paris for more than 50 years....

, Tino Rossi

Tino Rossi

Tino Rossi was a singer and film actor.Born Constantino Rossi in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, he became a tenor of French cabaret and one of the great romantic idols of his time. Gifted with an operatic voice, a "Latin Lover" persona made him a movie star as well...

, Jean Sablon

Jean Sablon

Jean Sablon was a popular French singer and actor.The son of a composer, with brothers and sisters who had successful careers of their own in musical entertainment, Jean Sablon studied piano at the Lyceé Charlemagne in Paris...

, Charles Trenet

Charles Trenet

Charles Trenet was a French singer and songwriter, most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s...

 and Maurice Chevalier

Maurice Chevalier

Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...

.

French popular music in the 20th century included singers like superstar Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

 as well as Monique Serf

Monique Serf

Monique Andrée Serf , known as Barbara , was a popular French female singer...

 (Barbara) and Georges Brassens

Georges Brassens

Georges Brassens , 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier...

 plus the more art-house musicians like Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1939 in Morlaix in the Brittany region of France, is a singer of avant-garde music. During the course of her career she has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry and world rhythms...

. The 60's brought the wave of Ye-Ye with such legends as Françoise Hardy, Serge Spanish Zarzuela

Zarzuela

Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

s and Italian operettas, French songs are nevertheless today still part of a dynamic French social movement which has for centuries – since the French revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 – moved audiences with elegant and often poetic lyrics combined with realism around social themes, spirituality and love. The most widely recognized songs such as "Non, je ne regrette rien", "Ne me quitte pas" or "Les feuilles mortes" have dignified successors in diverse genres such as rap, electronic music or pop. There are even competitions of chanson française, such as Vive la reprise. Among the modern followers of chanson française, we find Pierre Bachelet

Pierre Bachelet

Pierre Bachelet was a French singer-songwriter with a gentle romantic voice.Bachelet spent part of his childhood in Calais and developed a lifelong appreciation of the North of France, which inspired his hit song "Les corons" .His other hit songs include "Elle est d'ailleurs" , "Écris-moi" ,...

 or Paloma Berganza

Paloma Berganza

Paloma Berganza was born in Madrid, she studied guitar, solfege and harmony at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música in Madrid. She studied vocal interpretation and accompaniment with composer/guitarist Jorge Cardoso, classical singing with Angeles Chamorro and Concha Doñaque, vocal jazz with...

; as well as some fusion versions like Estrella Morente

Estrella Morente

Estrella Morente is a Spanish flamenco singer. She was born on August 14, 1980 in Las Gabias, Granada Province in southern Spain...

's version of "Ne me quitte pas

Ne me quitte pas

"Ne me quitte pas" is a song written and sung in French and in Dutch by the Belgian chansonnier Jacques Brel in 1959. It has been covered in the original French by many artists and has also been translated into and performed in many other languages...

."