“Voyage, Voyage” by Desireless

Desireless put "Voyage, Voyage" out as a single in 1986, and the French singer didn't fold it into an album until François, her 1989 debut. Jean-Michel Rivat wrote the words and produced it, Dominique Dubois wrote the music, and every syllable is in French, which by the usual rules should have kept it at home.

It ignored the rules. Between 1986 and 1988 it went to number one in more than ten European countries, topped the West German chart, where no other song of 1987 hung around the top 20 as long, and broke through in Britain and Ireland, markets that rarely let a Francophone record in. Music & Media heard high, dramatic vocals over an infectious electronic beat, somewhere in Alphaville's neighbourhood, and that's the whole hook: a huge, soaring voice drifting over a cool synth pulse.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.