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Was Jarre popular outside of France? I think the first record I ever bought was Oxygen. In France, he used to be super popular in the 80s, the novelty of instru

Was Jarre popular outside of France? I think the first record I ever bought was Oxygen. In France, he used to be super popular in the 80s, the novelty of instrumental electronic music and catchy melodies. For some reasons, he quickly went out of fashion.

zoom6628 4y ago
I grew up in NZ and was popular there with broad range of listeners. Oxygene was one of the first vinyls I bought.
hnlmorg 4y ago
I can’t speak for America but he was a household name in the U.K.
- ncr100 4y ago
  Maybe not household, in America but I grew up listening to him and I'm American and I was born in the 70s.
yankcrime 4y ago
I would say so yes, given he's in the Guinness Book of Records for one of the highest attended free concerts of all time (Moscow, 1997 with ~3.5 million people). He's also in 4th and 8th place, with 2.5 million in Paris in 1990 and Houston TX in 1986 with 1.3 million people respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-attended_concerts#Free_concerts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-attended_conce...
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  > Houston TX in 1986 with 1.3 million people respectively The intro to the concert footage has cuts from TV news and interviews, shows the scale of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYio7l7B940 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYio7l7B940 Was extra special as one songs was composed for and was intended to be performed live from the space station by one of the Challenger astronauts[1] who died a few months earlier. I was a young kid here in Norway at the time, but I recall very well the concert being covered by news here. His music was on the radio as well, so he was definitely well known outside of France I'd say. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McNair#Music_in_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McNair#Music_in_space
Jare 4y ago
Spanish here, in the early 80s he was fairly popular here and would be played in the top pop music stations, although to many adults it felt strange and experimental. I was a little kid when I asked to get The Concerts in China for xmas and my parents were like WTF.
grujicd 4y ago
I think Jarre was quite popular in ex Yugoslavia. In part because his music was used on TV in the 80s, for intros, background music for education shows, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it was not fully licensed at that time.
virgulino 4y ago
Brazilian here, Rendez-Vous was the first music cassette tape I ever bought.
Thoreandan 4y ago
US-based commenter here, I first heard JMJ in the soundtrack to the 1988 gaqme "Captain Blood" by ERE Informatique/Exxos which is a clip of Ethnicolor from Zoolook. Oxygene IV was advertised on TV in "Pure Moods" and a lot of other new-age compilations.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  > Captain Blood Forgot about this game. I can't remember the actual game, but I found it very beautiful and intriguing. I think the music play a big part.
  - MrVandemar 4y ago
    I'd never heard of the guy before, but after hearing Captain Blood I bought his back catalogue
otterpro 4y ago
In the late 80's and early 90's, while I was college student in US, I was interested in listening to MOD files with protracker, etc on my Amiga 500, and I discovered his music through it, available via usenet (as this was pre-www days)
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Was Jarre popular outside of France? As I recall it Jarre was a semi-god in Japan. He made incredible concert there and had a gigantic following. I think he was bigger in japan than in France.
atombender 4y ago
Jarre was definitely popular across Europe in the 1980s. I was introduced to him around 1987 with Oxygène and Équinoxe, and always loved his 1970s and 80s albums, though I agree that he went out of fashion pretty early. As far as I'm concerned, he probably peaked creatively with Zoolook (1984), and I haven't really cared since Waiting for Cousteau. His later work isn't exactly bad, it's just the exact same formula he's been following for 40+ years.
aidos 4y ago
If not a household name, at least a weekly household sound for kiwis as Oxygène was used in the title credits of Our World on a Sunday evening. https://youtu.be/wnPR9IoaTFc https://youtu.be/wnPR9IoaTFc
- schappim 4y ago
  And in Australia on SBS Chill[0] [0] https://www.sbs.com.au/radio/chill https://www.sbs.com.au/radio/chill
- ecornflak 4y ago
  Beat me to it for some NZ perspective, but while we’re here, I was introduced to Jean-Michel Jarre at one of the first Laser Tag places in NZ in the late 80s. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was next to Leisure land/Footrot Flats theme park in Te Atatu. Laserforce maybe? It was multi-level, filled with fog and Star Trek style doors that opened when you shot them, and Jean-Michel Jarre played as a constant soundtrack. It was truely magical for a space-and-sci-fi obsessed preteen. My friends and I only went a couple of times before it turned into paintball, which wasn’t as much fun for 11yr olds! Subsequently Rendez-vous was one of the first records I ever bought and played over and over again on weekend mornings when my parents were still in bed. Fourth Rendez-Vous was my favourite.
jacquesm 4y ago
What's with the 'was'? He's still quite popular and his music is played fairly regularly, not less frequently than other artists of that day except for the likes of Queen & Bowie. Just like Vangelis. Quite a bit of music from that era is simply never played at all, but Jarre's work still features in the same places that it did back then: as background to videos and on the PA of the local supermarket. The latter is quite funny: he had a record called 'Musique pour supermarche', to see it used like that 40 years later ... NL was a good market for Jarre though, he was extremely popular here back then.
- schoen 4y ago
  Has anyone happened to hear Brian Eno's Music for Airports played in a real airport?
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    https://media.londoncityairport.com/airport-plays-brian-eno-music-for-airports/ https://media.londoncityairport.com/airport-plays-brian-eno-...
  - Uhhrrr 4y ago
    When I first discovered it, I listened to it in an airport on a Discman, and it worked for me. Calming, and people seemed to move more slowly.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Discman... there's a word I haven't seen in a long time! I had one, one of the very earliest released as payment for a job. It came with one CD, Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.
- SanjayMehta 4y ago
  He's still releasing albums, mostly collaborations. Epica Take 2 came out on Apple Music last week.
  - 4y ago
pjmlp 4y ago
Quite popular in Portugal, I have several VHS tapes from his concerts.
VladimirGolovin 4y ago
Oh, he was very well known in USSR / Russia in the late 80s / early 90s. My friend was a DJ on a radio station back then, and she once played his music for an entire night -- and got a call from a listener who thanked her and said that it changed his life. As for his present-day popularity among younger people, it isn't as high as that of, for example, Queen or Pink Floyd -- though I had a ride with a young Uber driver who was entranced with Les Chants Magnétiques that we heard playing on the car radio. And as for me personally, I currently have three of his songs in my Spotify favorites.
foruhar 4y ago
Oxygene was part of the sound track for the Peter Weir (Dead Poet's Society, The Truman Show) film Gallipoli (1981); an interesting choice for a movie set in 1915.
smitty1e 4y ago
He was certainly a thing in the US not long after release.
SanjayMehta 4y ago
In India, Kraftwerk was always more easily available, since the mid 70s. Jarre was known of, but records weren't easily available. We would swap cassette tapes. That changed in the mid 80s.
mc32 4y ago
It seems like a lot of sci-fi shows used to try to copy his music to impress futurism.
vitalurk 4y ago
Yeap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzzF-WObYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzzF-WObYE
kyriakos 4y ago
Didn't grow up in France and he was one of my favourite artists of my youth. I could hear his popular tracks as background music on TV and radio but I doubt people knew the artist behind the music. More recently in a lot of interviews of djs and producers in European EDM scene, they reported that they were inspired to start a music career by him.
nickdothutton 4y ago
Pretty popular in the UK. His Destination Docklands concert had about 100K people (in atrocious weather) and was quite a notable spectacle. Something I remember from my childhood.
abraxas 4y ago
He was huge in Poland in the eighties, at least in the circles I hang out in. For the more geeky kids he was as well recognized as Michael Jackson among the pop listening crowd. Marek Biliński was a very distant second.

zoom6628 4y ago

I grew up in NZ and was popular there with broad range of listeners. Oxygene was one of the first vinyls I bought.

hnlmorg 4y ago

I can’t speak for America but he was a household name in the U.K.

ncr100 4y ago
Maybe not household, in America but I grew up listening to him and I'm American and I was born in the 70s.

yankcrime 4y ago

I would say so yes, given he's in the Guinness Book of Records for one of the highest attended free concerts of all time (Moscow, 1997 with ~3.5 million people). He's also in 4th and 8th place, with 2.5 million in Paris in 1990 and Houston TX in 1986 with 1.3 million people respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-attended_concerts#Free_concerts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-attended_conce...

magicalhippo 4y ago
> Houston TX in 1986 with 1.3 million people respectively The intro to the concert footage has cuts from TV news and interviews, shows the scale of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYio7l7B940 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYio7l7B940 Was extra special as one songs was composed for and was intended to be performed live from the space station by one of the Challenger astronauts[1] who died a few months earlier. I was a young kid here in Norway at the time, but I recall very well the concert being covered by news here. His music was on the radio as well, so he was definitely well known outside of France I'd say. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McNair#Music_in_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McNair#Music_in_space

Jare 4y ago

Spanish here, in the early 80s he was fairly popular here and would be played in the top pop music stations, although to many adults it felt strange and experimental. I was a little kid when I asked to get The Concerts in China for xmas and my parents were like WTF.

grujicd 4y ago

I think Jarre was quite popular in ex Yugoslavia. In part because his music was used on TV in the 80s, for intros, background music for education shows, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it was not fully licensed at that time.

virgulino 4y ago

Brazilian here, Rendez-Vous was the first music cassette tape I ever bought.

Thoreandan 4y ago

US-based commenter here, I first heard JMJ in the soundtrack to the 1988 gaqme "Captain Blood" by ERE Informatique/Exxos which is a clip of Ethnicolor from Zoolook. Oxygene IV was advertised on TV in "Pure Moods" and a lot of other new-age compilations.

yodsanklai 4y ago
> Captain Blood Forgot about this game. I can't remember the actual game, but I found it very beautiful and intriguing. I think the music play a big part.
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  I'd never heard of the guy before, but after hearing Captain Blood I bought his back catalogue

otterpro 4y ago

In the late 80's and early 90's, while I was college student in US, I was interested in listening to MOD files with protracker, etc on my Amiga 500, and I discovered his music through it, available via usenet (as this was pre-www days)

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> Was Jarre popular outside of France? As I recall it Jarre was a semi-god in Japan. He made incredible concert there and had a gigantic following. I think he was bigger in japan than in France.

atombender 4y ago

Jarre was definitely popular across Europe in the 1980s. I was introduced to him around 1987 with Oxygène and Équinoxe, and always loved his 1970s and 80s albums, though I agree that he went out of fashion pretty early. As far as I'm concerned, he probably peaked creatively with Zoolook (1984), and I haven't really cared since Waiting for Cousteau. His later work isn't exactly bad, it's just the exact same formula he's been following for 40+ years.

aidos 4y ago

If not a household name, at least a weekly household sound for kiwis as Oxygène was used in the title credits of Our World on a Sunday evening. https://youtu.be/wnPR9IoaTFc https://youtu.be/wnPR9IoaTFc

schappim 4y ago
And in Australia on SBS Chill[0] [0] https://www.sbs.com.au/radio/chill https://www.sbs.com.au/radio/chill
ecornflak 4y ago
Beat me to it for some NZ perspective, but while we’re here, I was introduced to Jean-Michel Jarre at one of the first Laser Tag places in NZ in the late 80s. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was next to Leisure land/Footrot Flats theme park in Te Atatu. Laserforce maybe? It was multi-level, filled with fog and Star Trek style doors that opened when you shot them, and Jean-Michel Jarre played as a constant soundtrack. It was truely magical for a space-and-sci-fi obsessed preteen. My friends and I only went a couple of times before it turned into paintball, which wasn’t as much fun for 11yr olds! Subsequently Rendez-vous was one of the first records I ever bought and played over and over again on weekend mornings when my parents were still in bed. Fourth Rendez-Vous was my favourite.

jacquesm 4y ago

What's with the 'was'? He's still quite popular and his music is played fairly regularly, not less frequently than other artists of that day except for the likes of Queen & Bowie. Just like Vangelis. Quite a bit of music from that era is simply never played at all, but Jarre's work still features in the same places that it did back then: as background to videos and on the PA of the local supermarket. The latter is quite funny: he had a record called 'Musique pour supermarche', to see it used like that 40 years later ... NL was a good market for Jarre though, he was extremely popular here back then.

schoen 4y ago
Has anyone happened to hear Brian Eno's Music for Airports played in a real airport?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  https://media.londoncityairport.com/airport-plays-brian-eno-music-for-airports/ https://media.londoncityairport.com/airport-plays-brian-eno-...
- Uhhrrr 4y ago
  When I first discovered it, I listened to it in an airport on a Discman, and it worked for me. Calming, and people seemed to move more slowly.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Discman... there's a word I haven't seen in a long time! I had one, one of the very earliest released as payment for a job. It came with one CD, Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.
SanjayMehta 4y ago
He's still releasing albums, mostly collaborations. Epica Take 2 came out on Apple Music last week.
- 4y ago

pjmlp 4y ago

Quite popular in Portugal, I have several VHS tapes from his concerts.

VladimirGolovin 4y ago

Oh, he was very well known in USSR / Russia in the late 80s / early 90s. My friend was a DJ on a radio station back then, and she once played his music for an entire night -- and got a call from a listener who thanked her and said that it changed his life. As for his present-day popularity among younger people, it isn't as high as that of, for example, Queen or Pink Floyd -- though I had a ride with a young Uber driver who was entranced with Les Chants Magnétiques that we heard playing on the car radio. And as for me personally, I currently have three of his songs in my Spotify favorites.

foruhar 4y ago

Oxygene was part of the sound track for the Peter Weir (Dead Poet's Society, The Truman Show) film Gallipoli (1981); an interesting choice for a movie set in 1915.

smitty1e 4y ago

He was certainly a thing in the US not long after release.

SanjayMehta 4y ago

In India, Kraftwerk was always more easily available, since the mid 70s. Jarre was known of, but records weren't easily available. We would swap cassette tapes. That changed in the mid 80s.

mc32 4y ago

It seems like a lot of sci-fi shows used to try to copy his music to impress futurism.

vitalurk 4y ago

Yeap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzzF-WObYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRzzF-WObYE

kyriakos 4y ago

Didn't grow up in France and he was one of my favourite artists of my youth. I could hear his popular tracks as background music on TV and radio but I doubt people knew the artist behind the music. More recently in a lot of interviews of djs and producers in European EDM scene, they reported that they were inspired to start a music career by him.

nickdothutton 4y ago

Pretty popular in the UK. His Destination Docklands concert had about 100K people (in atrocious weather) and was quite a notable spectacle. Something I remember from my childhood.

abraxas 4y ago

He was huge in Poland in the eighties, at least in the circles I hang out in. For the more geeky kids he was as well recognized as Michael Jackson among the pop listening crowd. Marek Biliński was a very distant second.