France on Saturday night revealed its song for the 2025 Eurovison sing contest, the last country to unveil its entry this year – here’s what you need to know about it.
Singer Louane – who has had a career in both acting and music since winning the French version of The Voice in 2013 – gave the first public performance of the song on Saturday night at the Stade de France, at half-time in the France v Scotland rugby match.
Here’s five things to know about the song, and France’s contest hopes this year;
She doesn’t suffer from vertigo
Louane (born Anne Edwige Maria Peichert) gave a spectacular performance at the Stade de France, singing on a platform suspended 14 metres above the pitch.
She was accompanied by violinists and a full military band, and her vocals soared over the 80,000 capacity stadium.
As a reality TV veteran, Louane should have no issues with singing live at the contest in Basel, Switzerland, in May.
However France’s Eurovision delegation has said that the staging in Switzerland will be “very different” – Eurovison rules allow a maximum of six people on stage per country, so she will have to dispense with the marching band, for a start.
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It’s a ballad
Eurovision is known for its wacky entries which have over the years included singing grannies, a singing gorilla (or a man in a gorilla costume at least) a man in a giant hamster wheel, a piano on fire and much, and many more.
By these standards, Louane is quite tame; she’s singing a ballad called Maman and it’s about her mother – who she lost when she was young – and her young daughter.
The chorus goes;
Maman, maman, maman
J’ai trouvé l’amour
Indélébile
Tu sais, le vrai « toujours »
Même quand le temps file
Quand il me tient la main
J’ai plus peur de rien
Et ça m’fait comme avant
Quand toi, tu m’tenais la main
That translates as;
Mama, mama, mama
I’ve found love
Indelible
You know, the real ‘forever’
Even when time flies
When he holds my hand I’m afraid of nothing
It feels like it used to
When you held my hand
It’s beautiful, classic and very French sounding. It may, however, struggle to stand out among some of the more flashy entries.
It’s in French
To the surprise of precisely no-one, France’s entry is sung entirely in French (although having said that, France did send a Breton language entry in 2022).
What is more of a surprise, is that it’s just one of five songs in French – Francophone Luxembourg and partially-Francophone Switzerland have sent French-language entries.
Even more surprisingly, perhaps, the Netherlands and Israel have both sent songs that are partially in French – in the case of the Netherlands, singer Claude Kiambe is Dutch-Congolese, spending the first part of his childhood in the French-speaking Democratic Republic of Congo.
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His song – C’est la Vie – is a mix of French and English, characteristic of his work.
There’s even a couple of lines of French in Australia’s anglophone entry Milkshake Man.
In fact, this year is a strikingly non-anglophone contest.
Originally countries were required to send songs sung in one of the official languages of their country – and in those days France did quite well, winning the contest several times. However since 1999 artists have been allowed to sing in any language they choose and English has become a lot more prevalent.
It’s become accepted wisdom that non-English songs never win, although in fact in recent years Italy and Ukraine have both won with non-English language songs.
This year almost half of the entries are in languages other than English.
It will be in the final
France is guaranteed a place in the final of the contest on May 17th – the country is one of the ‘big five’ that provide most of the funding for Eurovison and therefore get an automatic place in the final.
The others are the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. The host country – this year Switzerland – also goes straight through to the final.
We can also count on hearing some French spoken during the contest, because French is one of the two official languages of Eurovison (the other being English) which means that presenters are obliged to speak some French, such as announcing the dreaded “nul points” for the worst entries (something that the UK specialises in).
It might win
Although France hasn’t won Eurovision since 1977 it has been getting some better results in recent years – it was fourth last year and reached the second place spot in 2021.
The bookies currently have Louane in third place, behind perpetual contest powerhouses Sweden and Austria.
The country that wins gets to host the following year, so we could see Louane return to the Stade de France if everything goes her way.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
