In a Los Angeles recording studio, the French singer Mylène Farmer was trying to become someone else. She had left Paris behind, moved to the city, and was cutting her fourth album, Anamorphosée, at A&M and Record One studios. By the time the record appeared on 17 October 1995, the dark-haired performer her fans knew had been replaced by a long-haired blonde.
The Giorgino failure and its fallout
The reinvention was not a whim. A year earlier, the film Giorgino, produced by her longtime musical partner Laurent Boutonnat and starring Farmer, had opened in French cinemas on 5 October 1994. In its first week, only about 25,000 people bought tickets. The disaster broke the working relationship between the singer and the producer, with Boutonnat blaming Farmer for the failure. The failure of Giorgino was not the only thing shaping the new album. During this period, Farmer was reading Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and its ideas left a mark on the record. The songs that emerged were less mysterious than her earlier writing, with clearer language and a spirituality tied to Buddhism.
That rupture pushed Farmer toward new collaborators. Jeff Dahlgren, who had played the title role in Giorgino, became a key influence on the early stages of Anamorphosée and joined the musical team preparing the album. Boutonnat eventually arrived in Los Angeles to help finish the record, but the trio dynamic had changed: Farmer was no longer simply following her old partner's lead.
The meaning behind the invented title
The album's title announced the shift. Anamorphosée is a word that did not exist in French, a deliberate invention. The dictionary defines anamorphose as a picture of an object that optical devices, such as cylindrical mirrors, have pulled out of shape. Farmer borrowed the idea to describe her new musical style: the same artist, viewed through a different lens. The rock turn did not mean abandoning gentler material. Five of the album's twelve tracks were ballads with melancholic lyrics, and their arrangements drew on American rhythm and blues. The result was a record that felt both heavier and more direct than what had come before.
That lens was rock. Anamorphosée moved away from her earlier work toward a heavier, guitar-driven sound. Farmer wrote a song completely by herself for the first time: Tomber 7 fois... The lead single, XXL, arrived on 19 September 1995 and shot to the top of the chart, proving that the audience was willing to follow her into this new territory.
The album's commercial journey was unusual. Anamorphosée entered the French chart at number two on 15 October 1995, blocked by Céline Dion's D'eux. It would not reach number one until January 1997, roughly a year and a half after release, and stayed in the chart for 77 weeks. By 1996 it had gone double platinum in France. The album's success extended beyond France. In Belgium's Wallonia region, it spent 71 weeks in the chart, reaching number two in its first three weeks but never climbing to the top. In 2009, long after its original release, Anamorphosée was certified diamond in France. The album also stayed in the top 10 for 34 weeks in France. In Belgium, it held a top-10 position for 25 weeks.
All of this came from a woman who had just survived a very public embarrassment. The Giorgino flop could have ended her career; instead, it forced Mylène Farmer to find a new voice, a new image, and new people to make music with. Anamorphosée was the sound of that gamble paying off.
The Giorgino flop could have ended her career; instead, it forced Mylène Farmer to find a new voice, a new image, and new people to make music with.