My Jewish Bakery Vanessa Zibi

French pop star (and significant other of Johnny Depp) recorded her English-language debut record in 1991; the self-titled disc was a bit of a flop commercially, but, surprisingly, succeeds artistically. Producer Lenny Kravitz gives Vanessa Paradis some of his best songs and she really can carry a tune with her breathy little-girl vocals…

French pop star (and significant other of Johnny Depp) recorded her English-language debut record in 1991; the self-titled disc was a bit of a flop commercially, but, surprisingly, succeeds artistically. Producer Lenny Kravitz gives Vanessa Paradis some of his best songs and she really can carry a tune with her breathy little-girl vocals. The highlights of the record are many, but the songs that will have you smiling like a fool at the sheer poptasticness of it all are the gliding funk with orchestra of "Natural High;" the strutting girl group of "Be My Baby;" the sweet-as-sugar sunshine pop of "Sunday Mondays;" the psych-soul of "Your Love Has Got a Handle on My Mind" (which features Paradis' most assured vocal and a nice background assist from Kravitz); and the sweet soul of "Just as Long as You Are There."

On March 16, 1968, the United States Army killed over 500 unarmed civilians in the hamlet of Mỹ Lai, Vietnam. The unimaginable brutality of the event impacted all those who witnessed it firsthand, including helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who, against orders, intervened to save Vietnamese lives. Thompson’s story is the basis of the opera Mỹ Lai, composed by Jonathan Berger (music) and Harriet Scott Chessman (libretto) for Kronos Quartet, Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, and vocalist Rinde Eckert. This recording of Mỹ Lai captures the visceral, phantasmal depictions of Thompson’s grief, horror, and guilt as he is haunted by persistent memories of that cataclysmic day, half a world and nearly four decades away. Tense and unforgiving, Mỹ Lai is “a gripping affair, beginning to end” (New York Times). Presented here alongside recollections by Vietnamese survivor Trần Văn Đức, it is a memorial to all the Mỹ Lai villagers killed on that grim day.

Vanessa Paradis had her first hit when she was 14 years old in 1987. The song, "Joe Le Taxi," launched a career that encompassed acting and modeling, creative pursuits that made the French native an international superstar and attracted such high-profile romantic interests as Lenny Kravitz – who produced her eponymous English debut in 1992 – and Johnny Depp, who fathered her actress daughter, Lily-Rose Depp, in 1999…