BLOG: Why British bands are always better than French bands.

Why do British bands always do it so much better than all the rest? Why can’t our even most famous French bands compete to some level with them? Why do they always outclass us? Why do we always put ourselves in a situation where we relive an Angincourt battle with our cousin from the other side of the Channel? I would surely have been a traitor to my country right back to the Hundred Years War for so many reasons that I cannot even count them. But surely, there are a few reasons why I do think British bands always do better than we do and actually, for the majority of them, deserve a lot more respect than French bands (and I mean French-speaking bands as English-speaking bands would have been traitors like myself so traitors unite, you know.) 

British bands usually know what being in a band means: common objectives, common influences, common work for the common good, common drinking for a common spirit, a good fight to restore peace. We French people tend to be a lot more individualistic and ego-centred. Which means that we also have a lot more singers than actual bands. You don’t fight with yourself when you’re on your own, you don’t get criticized when you’re on your own, you don’t have to justify yourself when you’re on your own. Probably the reason why Pete Doherty hangs around Paris a lot these days, easy to be an über-ego among people who bow down in front of characters. Old sense of lost monarchy. We beheaded  them to crown others. And also, we love poets with flooded lungs.
British bands also have this will to conquer the world that we do not have. We do not even make a single effort to speak proper English as we think the rest of the world should speak our language - that we still believe is the language of love and culture. Well, well, well…. We live in the past, and this is not even vintage, this is fossilized thought. Obviously, this will to conquer leads to arrogance, but let me tell you, this is the well-deserved arrogance of someone who knows their own value. 

For some reasons, British bands also have the sense of musicality, lyrics and rhythm that French bands lack. Some people said it’s all because of the language: English has stressed and unstressed words, stressed and unstressed syllables which can impose a different meaning to a sentence. French has redundancy: if we want to stress something, we just beat around the bush, explain it with a longer sentence, which means we have great lyricists but awful songwriters. (Serge Gainsbourg being the exception)

Let’s not forget the attitude and the clothes. British bands seem to know what to put on to look like proper rock stars. French bands either overdo it- and when you look like the typical French guy, it seems a bit too much. Just like when an American hangs around with a beret in the Père Lachaise . Blatantly, go to Calais and hang around La Cité Europe, you can spot any British guy or girl by the way they dress. Go to London, you’ll find the French guy or girl easily, either by the way they dress or their incapacity not to shout out something bad about where they are (be it the food, the people, the clothes etc…). 

Let me at least just finish with one positive thing about French bands: the ones that are good are really super good. We do not have average French-speaking bands, we either have top ones with superclass lyrics, interesting music or we have the bottom of the barrel.

 And sometimes, you just have to say that you love British music just for no other reason that unconditional love. And as unconditional love can not be explained, our love for British music will remain obscure – but totally vivid for us.