French pop music

I'm just starting to learn French with my son, who's turning 13 next month. When I learned Hindi, I listened to tons of Bollywood music. When I was learning German, I discovered Jupiter Jones. In both cases, I liked the music and the lyrics were pretty clearly enunciated.

So now I'm looking for suggestions for French music to listen to, to help improve our listening and to make the whole process more like fun than like work. There are a few simple criteria:

the music should be good (however you want to define "good")
the words should be fairly clearly sung
the printed lyrics should be readily available (preferably mention if the CD has a lyric sheet)
the language should be fairly standard (obviously it will be slang-ridden, but still useful for learning. I hope you know what I mean)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

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Permalink Reply by Erwan on December 4, 2011 at 10:57am

You can may be check an old band "Niagara".

You can find a lot of songs on You Tube. e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLNCkVU7_RA

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Permalink Reply by Brian on December 4, 2011 at 12:17pm

Thanks, Jim!

I think maybe I'm just too "old-school." I keep waiting to see a site that sells these songs in some semi-traditional way, and I guess I have a concern that any other purchase might be technically illegal or somehow of dubious quality or even give my computer a virus of some kind. Any further advice or reassurance on this topic would be appreciated.

Speaking of topics, I'll get back "on thread": here are three more singers I would recommend for French language learners: Daniel Balavoine, Julie Zenatti, and Michel Polnareff. All have catchy tunes and reasonably comprehensible lyrics.

I do have a couple Niagara songs on my playlist so far -- my favorite of those two is Soleil d'Hiver (the other being Un Million d'Annee, which is also excellent).