Nouvelle Vague is a French cover band led by musicians Olivier Libaux and Marc Collin. Their name means “new wave” in French, and refers simultaneously to the French New Wave cinema movement of the 1960s, to the new wave music movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which provides many of the songs that the band covers, and to bossa nova (Portuguese for “new wave”), a musical style that the band frequently uses in its arrangements.
The group’s first album, the self-titled Nouvelle Vague, was released in 2004. Explaining how the project came about, Libaux later said: “Marc Collin and I were both musicians and producers in the French music industry when, in 2003, Marc called me with this very strange idea of covering LOve Will Tear Us Apart in a bossa nova version. I thought this idea was absolutely crazy but very exciting. So we decided to get into the studio and try it out as soon as possible. Then we did Just Can’t Get Enough and Guns of Brixton, put the album together in just eight months. And after that we called ourselves Nouvelle Vague … and that’s the story!” The songs on the first album were recorded with female vocalists who reportedly had not previously heard the songs they would be singing.The album was a commercial success, peaking at number 69 in the French album charts and spending a total of 39 weeks in the top 200. In 2006 it was reported that the album had sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide.
The group’s second album, ‘Bande a Part’, released in 2006, was again a commercial success. It charted in several European countries, peaking at number 23 in the French album charts, number 15 in the German charts, number 8 in Portugal, and reaching number 79 in the UK. In 2008, Collin released an album titled Hollywood, mon amour, consisting of recordings made following the Nouvelle Vague formula, of songs from 1980s film soundtracks. In 2009 Nouvelle Vague released their third album entitled ‘3’. It did not receive such good reviews as the previous two albums and was not as commercially successful.
In 2010 the group released an album of French-language remakes, ‘Couleurs sur Paris’. The album features guest appearances from some well-known musicians, including Vanessa Paradis, Olivia Ruiz, and Coeur de Pirate. It also features an appearance by Camille, who returns to perform a version of the song Putain, putain by the Belgian band TC Matic. In the same year, the group also released a fifteen-track Best of compilation. A special edition version of the compilation features an additional disc of rare and unreleased material.
The band’s critical and commercial success peaked with the release of their second album, Bande à Part. With the release of 3 and Couleurs sur Paris, critics gave the band less attention. The band subsequently went into hiatus, releasing no new material and performing few live shows. Collin later explained this hiatus, saying, “I was bored of myself doing covers,” and citing diminishing critical acclaim: “With the first and second albums, all the media said: ‘This is a great idea, a great rendition’ – and after the third album it was suddenly, ‘OK, it’s always the same thing, the same concept, we don’t want to talk about it’. A new album I Could Be Happy was released in November 2016. The title track, a cover of the song by Altered Images, was made available for download and digital streaming.
