Song Of The Day 5/24/2013: Johnny Hallyday - "Oui, J'ai"

Johnny Hallyday was, very roughly speaking, France's answer to Elvis Presley, and the first bonafide rock superstar to emerge from that place. He even went into the French army early in his career, just like Elvis. However, I've always considered his early records more like Gene Vincent. One thing that's different about Johnny than Elvis and Gene is that Johnny's still alive, making new music as recently as last year. He went through a rockabilly phase, a hippie phase, a psychedelic phase, a country-rock phase, a bombastic pop phase -- a couple of years ago he even went on a little proggy diversion. Hallyday may be the rock star that's realistically closest to Dewey Cox, John C. Reilly's faux rock star from the parody biopic Walk Hard. It's just that nobody's heard of him outside France and Quebec. This is from 1960, the year he debuted, and contains some seminal use of mirror technology. Way ahead of its time.