Previously unclear references to 1855 (the year of France’s first international exhibition) and a certain ‘material tower’ suddenly made much more sense. Fortunately, the singer would eventually spill the beans about the song’s deeper meaning in a live session, stating that ‘1901’ was a ‘fantasy about Paris’ before and during the Belle Époque – which is when he reckons the city was at its cultural and artistic zenith. ‘1901’ – a sleeper hit from 2009’s breakthrough fourth album ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ – was the song that would introduce the band to a vast throng of new fans, and yet, frontman Thomas Mars’s accented sing-song English didn’t really make a whole deal of sense. It can be difficult to interpret the lyrics of Versailles band Phoenix.
It was on this song that her smooth and adaptable voice would really come in its own, both in the RnB-inflected verses and the breathy, Jane Birkin-style French interlude, in which she marvels at the vivacity of the City of Light: ‘La Suède est où je vis / Mais c’est à Paris que je me sens en vie’ (‘I live in Sweden / but Paris is where I feel alive’). They never would, alas, and the song is really about feeling alone, while moving forward and leaving sadness behind: ‘It’s that time to transform / to come around, I’m changing,’ sings Nagano.
Taking the city as a hypothetical future rendezvous for a long-distance friendship that’s already been tragically cut short, lead singer Yukimi Nagano tells of how Paris was the marvellous location she and her departed friend had at last decided to meet. Nobody does sad pop music quite like the Swedes, and this 2014 track from Gothenburg four-piece Little Dragon must surely be one of the saddest songs ever written – however tangentially – about the French capital.
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