I am unable to communicate in anything that is not slow jams these days.  I have a glass of Courvosieur permanently attached to my right hand, and I just ordered a bear skinned rug for my new apartment to make sweet love to you in.

I thought we could class it up a bit this week, take a trip across the Atlantic and visit France by way of some French slow jams. I’ve never been to France, but I enjoy bread, wine, smoking and laughing at Americans, so I imagine it’s the kind of place I would love to visit.

First, Air’s “Playground Love”, from the Virgin Suicides. Is there anything more bittersweet than your high school love?  Mine lives in Denmark, where he is getting his PhD in something I can barely begin to explain to you. I saw him when I visited Copenhagen, and we did a lot of shots in really old European bars. I was so sad to leave him, even though I knew nothing could, or would happen between us.

Vanessa Paradis, aka Mrs. Johnny Depp, released an album in 1992 that I read a really terrible review of in Sassy magazine and my little 12 year old brain knew I had to go see just how bad it was. Of course, I loved it. Her version of “Be My Baby” is sugary pop fun; sad, pathetic lyrics declaring unrequited love over bouncy fun tunes, the perfect musical description to the agony and ecstasy of loving someone who doesn’t love you back.  Not technically a slow jam, but it’s French, okay! Back up off my column.

Anything Daft Punk does turns me into mush. I love the rare Daft Punk songs with words, especially this one, “Something About Us”, what I would like to imagine is a romantic ode to a fling, a one night stand: someone you may love in the moment, but you know is leaving. The obsession with love that lasts forever in our society is an odd one, most of the people you date, or even know, aren’t going to be with you forever. Sometimes you fall in love for an hour or two. Or in my case, for about 12 hours in a hotel room in Vegas (and that’s all I have to say about that!)

The person who introduced me to the band that wrote our next slow jam, m83′s “Teen Angst”, described the music of m83 to me as what it felt like to fall in love. That’s how I feel about this song. Like I’m falling down the rabbit hole.

I’m actually not the biggest fan of the next song, but I’m including it for the sake of completion in a post about French slow jams to either cry or have sex to (or both at the same time) because this is pretty much what I think of in my head when I think of a ridiculously cheesy French pop song. The video even has a woman in a black trench coat walking around a barren urban landscape. Don’t knock us over the head with how artsy you are, Mono.

And finally, finally, for the comedown, for the afterglow.. a little Serge Gainsbourg to sing you to sleep