Op Drop breaking news: Is Alizée moving from RCA Records to Jive/Epic?

Unsubstantiated Rumors: The Best Kind

Noticed this in a fan post Sunday morning on Alizée’s official MySpace page:

coucou ma belle,
c'est vrai??

Fini le label RCA ! Alizée va prochainement changer d'équipe (Toujours sous Sony) !

Une fois ce changement d'équipe effectué, la promo reprendra. FIFTY SIXTY aura donc sa promotion, et d'autres singles suivront.

Qu’est-ce que c’est? I dropped French like a bad habit in Grade 10—a decision that twenty-plus me now profoundly regrets—so my understanding of the above is incomplete at best…but ‘Fini le label RCA!’ doesn’t leave much to interpretation. Ruh-roh, Raggy!

Fortunately, for those of us who don’t speak fluent French, Snatcher42 (of Operation LTNY fame) drops some science over in the forums at Alizée America. Turns out this was originally part of a post was originally made by a gentleman by the name of julien over at AFC. Snatcher’s rough English translation of julien's post, and some analysis, appears below:

End of the RCA label! Alizée will soon change teams (Still under Sony)!

Once this team change is made, promotion will resume. FIFTY SIXTY will have it's promotion, and other singles will follow.

In October, Alizée will be in Madame Figaro for a special Gainsbourg issue. Several artists participated. Each artist took a picture and said a word.

Next Saturday, there will be an interview with Jean Fauque (And Alizée?) on the new program "Access private."

The Concert Tickets sell very well! (I wanted to add in the euphoria)

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Basically, it sounds like she's getting new management that wants to re-launch promotion (hopefully better this time), first with Fifty Sixty and then with other singles. It's like a fresh start for the album! Edit, more info from Nidalizee: It's not just Alizée that's leaving RCA, the whole label is shutting down! The artists are being moved to other branches within Sony. Alizée is going to JIVE EPIC.

Hmm. Rumor or fact? It remains to be seen, as I’ve so far been unable to independently confirm that RCA is indeed being shut down. But if it does prove true…while Sony BMG’s shuttering of RCA Records—a label with a long and storied history behind it—makes for some pretty distressing commentary on the state of today’s music industry, could this potentially be a positive development for Team Alizée?

Almost as long as I’ve been an Alizée fan (which is admittedly not long, only since the end of last year) I’ve been reading complaints that RCA’s promotion for Psychédélices has been fairly lackluster, to the point of being virtually non-existant of late, and the time it’s taken for things to actually happen has bordered on ‘interminable’. For example, Alizée’s official site (the design and maintenance of which I can only assume falls under the purview of the label, RCA) hasn’t been updated since sometime in April…and though it’s certainly very pretty to look at and heavy on the bling, it’s sorely lacking in actual content.

And while there was a decent amount of promotion for the release of Mademoiselle Juliette as the album’s first single in December (despite the single having been originally released at the end of September), there’s been comparatively little for its second single, Fifty Sixty, which debuted in February. The beginnings of a viral marketing campaign looked to be underway with the unveiling of the Psychédéclips website in May, which features not one but two official remixes of the song alongside the original. But a major component of the site—Lilly Town TV, which is apparently intended to feature fan-created content (a la YouTube)—is still “Coming Soon” four months later. (This is an absolute shame, as I can think of at least a few fan-made remixes that could really rock the casbah, and one in particular that's so good, it positively transcends the source material.)

Jive/Epic, meanwhile, is another subsidiary label of Sony BMG, which publishes a stable of enormously successful American music stars such as Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Jordin Sparks and Micheal Jackson, as well as internationally (if not domestically) renowned artists like Lemar, Indochine, and Amel Bent. Will they have more on the ball than RCA Records did? Is there a greater chance of Alizée crossing over to America with Jive/Epic?

The rumor of increased/renewed promotion for Fifty Sixty gives me hope as far as the former is concerned. And as far as the second goes…check out these excerpts from the Wikipedia entry of another French Jive/Epic artist, Julien Doré:

Julien Doré, born July 7, 1982, in Alès (Gard), is a French singer, winner of the 5th season of the television show Nouvelle Star, aired on the French Television M6 channel.

His most memorable performances and revelations were while singing "Moi... Lolita" from "Alizée" and "...Baby One More Time" from "Britney Spears", Dance music songs, in acoustics.

Les Limites [the first single from Julien’s first studio album, Ersatz] is to be released June 16, 2008 worldwide. It was released March 31, 2008 in France. On Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip blog, the music video made its world premiere.

A worldwide release, for a French artist, with a video premiere on Perez Hilton’s blog. This is the kind of North American exposure that Alizée fans over here have been dreaming about for years! (Although, we could probably do without the naked guy with the banjo...) Granted, Les Limites hasn’t exactly set the US music charts on fire…but I’d be willing to bet that he didn’t already have an established fan base here who were not only entrenched, but were already actively evangelizing for him without any guidance or co-operation from Jive/Epic.

Alizée, on the other hand, does have that going for her, in spades. We’re already dropping disques, handing out fliers, infiltrating other artists' concerts, and spreading the signal. Imagine the possibilities if her label was on the same page…or if, dare I suggest it, they were working with us?

Attention Jive/Epic folks: if you’re reading this, we’d love to talk to you.

More on this story as it develops, folks...stay tuned!