Nouvelle scène française

Nouvelle scène française is the wave of French singer-songwriters that renewed chanson from the late 1990s onward, after the genre had been declared commercially dead. Artists such as *Benjamin Biolay*, *Keren Ann*, *Dominique A*, *Camille* and *Philippe Katerine* combined the literary French lyric tradition with indie rock, electronica, bossa nova and orchestral pop, singing in French (and occasionally English) with an intimacy and formal playfulness that reconnected chanson with younger audiences and critics. Its leading figures write and arrange for one another, and the scene functions as a school as much as a market.