The world was waiting for Tom Cruise, but then Phoenix came along, even though there was no ash to be seen, and played the concert of the year, completely unexpectedly. Sorry, Adele, sorry, Swifties, but what was seen and heard in Paris last night was simply very cool. In the middle of his gigantic closing ceremony for the Olympic Games, the 42-year-old theatre director Thomas Jolly had invited the heroes of French indie pop to play a concert. And how they did it. And to whom! They started with their hit Flour mania from 2009, and the athletes gathered in the stadium spontaneously became an enthusiastic concert audience, who also happened to have a few medals hanging around their necks. They also danced to If I Ever Feel Better and cheered when suddenly the DJ and producer Kavinsky from Paris appeared on stage, the musician whose dance track Nightcall also to the soundtrack of the film classic Drive with Ryan Gosling from 2011.
“There’s something inside you”the Belgian musician Angèle sang in this piece, “It’s hard to explain/ They’re talking about you, boy/ But you’re still the same.” Hadn’t Ryan Gosling himself been seen in the audience at the Olympic Games just a few days ago, together with his wife, the actress Eva Mendes? Kavinsky had invited Angèle to Nightcall to sing, Phoenix became the backing band for a few minutes. And then came the big performance of Air, the duo that grew up in Versailles like the members of Phoenix, whose dreamy pop will forever be the soundtrack of the late nineties and early noughties. Together with Phoenix, dressed all in white, they played Playground Loveher song for Sofia Coppola’s film The Virgin SuicidesThe director has been married to Thomas Mars, the singer of Phoenix, for a long time.
This was followed by guest appearances by Cambodian rapper VannDa and a duet by Thomas Mars with Ezra Koenig, the singer of the US band Vampire Weekend. It all seemed so casual, so elegant, so funky, so calm and yet ecstatic. There it was, the famous French touch that has defined the country’s pop for decades. Jimmy Fallon, the late-night presenter from the USA, understood what was happening. “They are incredible,” he commented on Phoenix’s performance in the US broadcast of the closing ceremony, “great band, they always bring energy.”
Phoenix again, here from Tom Cruise’s perspective © Bertrand Guay/Getty Images
And in Germany? The ZDF duo, who were clearly overwhelmed, could only think of sentences like “It’s already a few years old” and, really true: “Can be loud and quiet”. Instead, they consistently pronounced the band’s name incorrectly in German, Phönix, as if the news channel’s house band were performing. But they could have revealed to their viewers, for example, that Thomas Mars has a German mother, who in turn is the sister of the journalist Hellmuth Karasek, the long-time ensemble member of the ZDF show The literary quartetWhen Phoenix performed their biggest hit last night 1901 Karasek’s nephew jumped into a mosh pit formed by Olympic athletes. Didn’t Mars look like Tom Cruise’s younger brother at that moment?
After this performance, it was clear once again why the closing ceremony director Thomas Jolly had recently reacted politely but firmly when the French DJ David Guetta, known for his beats that appeal to the masses, complained about not being booked for the Olympic celebrations: Jolly said that they had other plans. He could also have said: something better. Indie pop, but big. This surprise worked in Paris. And then Tom Cruise came along.
The world was waiting for Tom Cruise, but then Phoenix came along, even though there was no ash to be seen, and played the concert of the year, completely unexpectedly. Sorry, Adele, sorry, Swifties, but what was seen and heard in Paris last night was simply very cool. In the middle of his gigantic closing ceremony for the Olympic Games, the 42-year-old theatre director Thomas Jolly had invited the heroes of French indie pop to play a concert. And how they did it. And to whom! They started with their hit Flour mania from 2009, and the athletes gathered in the stadium spontaneously became an enthusiastic concert audience, who also happened to have a few medals hanging around their necks. They also danced to If I Ever Feel Better and cheered when suddenly the DJ and producer Kavinsky from Paris appeared on stage, the musician whose dance track Nightcall also to the soundtrack of the film classic Drive with Ryan Gosling from 2011.
