La Ritournelle

Sébastien Tellier wrote "La Ritournelle", the fifth track on Politics, 7:34, recorded in 2003, and Record Makers calls it his biggest song. Tony Allen, formerly of Fela Kuti's band, played drums. The single is dated September 26, 2004 by the song's Wikipedia article and 2005 by the artist's, at 7:36 with remixes by Mr Dan, Jim Noir and Jake Bullit. It reached 167 in France and 66 in the UK. The label's remix EP (REC192) has Tony Allen's bonus beat, a Gilligan Moss remix and Mr Dan's Magic Wand mix. NME called it Basically Unfinished Sympathy Part II, and ranked it 110th in its 150 best tracks of the past 15 years in October 2011; DJ Tom Middleton said he had to pull over and weep the first time he heard it, both per the label's biography. We saw the claim that Tellier wrote it in eight minutes only in a search snippet, so we do not rely on it.

Wikipedia lists uses in a US Five channel ident of New York at night, Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl, a European L'Oreal advertisement and the film Oslo, August 31st. Record Makers says the Weeknd sampled it on Kiss Land (2013), which we could not check against WhoSampled. An acoustic version is on Sessions (2006), recorded with the pianist Simon Dalmais. On August 28, 2024 Tellier played it on piano with Ensemble Matheus at the opening ceremony of the Paris Paralympic Games on the Place de la Concorde, at the arrival of the Paralympic flame.

Our upload is titled Official Video. We found no statement from Tellier on the song's meaning and no setlist.fm count.