Les tubes de l'été
 
In the midst of a declining CD market, production company Beluga Productions expanded its activities in May 2007 with the release of “Summer Hits”, a book with CD, in partnership with newspaper “Le Monde”, book publisher Flammarion, Universal and Radio Nostalgie.

The idea came up in July 2005 when Eric Dufaure (owner of Beluga) discovered a series of articles on « Summer hits » from 1963 to 2004 in « Le Monde ». Inspired by the quality of the articles - for every year, a “summer hit” was reviewed by in-house writers, plus a book and an object - he contacted chief music editor Véronique Mortaigne.

After negotiating with the management of “Le Monde” an agreement to use sufficient editorial content to produce a book with CD covering the period from 1956 to 2006, he approached publisher Flammarion. Laurent Chollet, director of the “Pop Music” collection and Sophy Thompson, in charge of the “Fine books” department, signed on. Beluga then made a deal with Universal Music to add a 20-track compilation CD. Radio Nostalgie came on board as radio sponsor.

As producer, publisher and song-writer, Eric Dufaure had always been interested in the « hit record » phenomenon. In 1991, working at French authors’ society Sacem, he came up with the idea of celebrating 40 years of French hit singles (credit for the concept is also due to “Rolling Stone Magazine” who had produced a special issue for US and UK hit singles). Teaming up with journalists Yves Bigot (program director at France Inter) and Max and François Armanet from the “Nouvel Observateur” magazine, he convinced Sacem to sponsor a supplement of the Nouvel Obs, “40 years of 45 singles”.

The content was a series of articles on the 100 best French singles, as chosen by a jury of 40 media personalities, including celebrated DJs, rock critics, TV and radio hosts etc. A 2-hour TV special hosted by Thierry Ardisson, a one week celebration on radio France Inter and a publication with song listings issued by Sacem completed the package.

The release of “Summer Hits”, on May 24th 2007, was promoted via a campaign on Radio Nostalgie including a special week-end DJeyed by media personality Pierre Lescure, who prefaced the book. At the launching party at the Gibus rock club on June 14th, several artists came on stage to sing some of the hits, backed by a group led by Eric Dufaure : Sofia Essaïdi, Nina Morato, Thierry Stremler, Lemmy Constantine...