Starmania, The Dystopian Glam-Rock Rock Opera of France

I love musicals and we could all use more of them at the moment. Something about the schmaltz, the sincerity, the singing and dancing spectacle of it all. That doesn’t mean that all musicals are good, but they also require you to suspend a lot of disbelief and just bask in the emotionality, the cleverness, the charm. Or in the case of Starmania, to bask in a kind of 80s-era dystopian existential crisis where nobody is happy, but everyone wants to sing about it.

This post was mostly put together on my phone apologies for any typos or awkward phrasing, beyond the normal

… and yet it’s kind of an amazing spectacle with some really good songs.

. And I know they’re not all good, but when they are good, they’re incredible.

I have written a long, probably unhinged piece about Jesus Christ Superstar, a show I admire for reasons the creators likely never intended.

Sometimes, I give musicals too much thought.

And “too much thought” doesn’t work very well in this genre.

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France doesn’t do musicals

I’m not sure exactly why France never produced that many musicals, considering just how much music has been made in this culture - and how much theatre has been produced in the culture. they simply have created very few peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate/chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter musical spectacle mashups.

it really seems like they should have.

People might wish to remain aloof from this kind of sentimentality, but it seems well at home here.

It’s not that a lot of cultures actually produce many musicals, after all, it just that it seems like France should.

For any reservations they may have. The French have spectacular musical kitsch.

and Starmania might be its best expression.

Le Blues du Businessman Bruno Pelletier (2015 performance)

the audience was ready for that song the second it started. This was just a Pelletier concert, not some dedicated Starmania revival.

Iand Starmania is in seemingly endless revivals somewhere in France.

they rolls their eyes, they know the words

Whenever I mention the show to French friends, there were eye rolls or maybe a slight chuckle, but they knew the words.

Starmania selections are on every karaoke machine in France—Le Blues du Businessman, Le Monde est stone, Quand on arrive en ville (personal favorite), Les Uns contre les autres, Ziggy, and of course S.O.S. d’un terrien en détresse, the one every ambitious tenor tackles after two glasses of wine and a questionable decision.

Quand on arrive en ville - Daniel Balavoine (1978)

I had 2 different men in the 40s sing Le Blues du Businessman without being asked to do so. The song is about a corrupt businessman that really would rather be a rock and roll singer. Not a likable guy, we’re not supposed to change our thinking about him he’s unhappy and he makes others unhappy.

So that should set the tone

France’s answer to the unasked question

What would it be like if George Orwell, Michel Foucault and Johnny Hallyday wrote a Eurovision musical in French?

What is Cats had no singing cats?

What is Starlight Express without roller skates, broken ankles and the inevitable falling off stage in the midst of rehearsal?

What if Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark had no Spiderman?

What if they managed to make Robocop: the Musical without robots?

Starmania.

If you have the time, here is the complete 1989 version, complete with an update of a French Max Headroom character

If you have the time, it’s worth a watch for the hairstyles alone.

Starmania feels like France’s answer to every musical question: proof that a culture allergic to sentimentality secretly adores full-throated, over-the-top sincerity.

But it is catchy as hell.

Where anglophone cultures just seem to churn out musicals, they haven’t been that popular in France. But the ones they have seem to be well-loved. Always on a karaoke setlist, Starmania does not disappoint.

Bizarrely of an era - two times: they managed to produce at least 2 iconic performances of it, the 1979 version and then an amped up, dry ice filled, shoulder padded and hairsprayed 1989 version.

the plot

The musical is set in a futuristic city called Monopolis, where a populist tycoon vies for power while a gang of underground rebels fights back with media-savvy terrorism. Ugh. I know - maybe a little too close to reality these days but at least they’re singing. Amid neon-lit chaos, love stories unravel, fame corrupts, and everyone sings about loneliness under the glow of the TV screen.

Nobody is happy in this musical.

It’s mostly sad. Or angry. but there is not a single song of uplift or lightheartedness in this entire musical.

quebecois-français

Whenever I hear descriptions of the musical, it is inevitably described not as a musical, but as a French-Quebequer musical, for some reason. Created by Michel Berger (French pop royalty, married to France Gall) and Luc Plamondon (a Québécois lyricist with grand visions), Starmania takes place in Monopolis, a vaguely Germanic megalopolis run by media moguls and populist strongmen. It’s a world where revolutionaries blow up TV stations and everyone secretly wants to be famous.

Not so secretly: the all sing about it

The original cast included Daniel Balavoine as the rebel Johnny Rockfort (my personal favorite singer of the lot), France Gall as Crystal the TV journalist, Claude Dubois as the political schemer Zéro Janvier, and Thibeault as Marie-Jeanne, the tragic waitress who just wants to feel something. These weren’t just actors. They were French pop giants throwing themselves into a retro vision of a dark future.

Le Monde est stone Rejane Pérry (1989 version)

There’s something about it that captures an amazing 1980s-ness in a way that reminds me of Cyndi Lauper ballads. In fact, this was her big song in the English language version - Tycoon - which flopped.

Starmania has been revived multiple times:

• 1979: Original cast, concept album-style stage show
• 1988–89: Fully staged, new visuals, more theatricality. This version seems to be the one that really made it famous.
• 1993–94: Another revival with new leads including Maurane and Patsy Gallant
• 2000s–present: Periodic stagings, including a 2022 reboot with holographic elements and new arrangements

And yet, there’s still no clean comparison in the anglophone world. Les Misérables? Funny enough, it was a flop in France. Cats? Maybe, at least for the tone of the songs. Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar come closest in form—rock operas with spiritual angst—but Starmania takes itself more seriously. There’s no camp here, no knowing grin.

Why does it matter? Because Starmania takes the themes of media obsession, political spectacle, and existential yearning—and plays them straight. That’s not a thing we often do in the U.S. We like irony. They like feeling. In France, dystopia comes with ballads. With eyeliner and heartbreak. With Ziggy.

The English version in the early 90s—Tycoon—featuring Cyndi Lauper, Peter Kingsbery, even Tom Jones, was a flop. It didn’t stick. Maybe it was the translation. Maybe you just can’t export a song like “Travesti” without losing its soul.

And yes, when you give the French license to get melodramatic, they go all in.

have I missed anything? I know there are many great French musicals, or at least musicals with French in them, but there really have not been many made since the 1960s. If there’s something I missed, let me know!

Also let me know if you want me to post my take on Jesus Christ Superstar. it’s not really relevant to France at all, but it might be fun

The 1979 version seems to have been a much more stripped down affair. Most of the footage looks very basic compared to the 1989 redux.