History Music / JeanMichelJarre

** Jarre was covered a ''lot'' in the UsefulNotes/{{Commodore64}} music scene, probably more so than any other artist.

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* GenreRoulette: This is a given, considering that Jarre's albums are {{New Sound Album}}s more often than not, and that Jarre doesn't consider ElectronicMusic a genre but a way of making music. But he sometimes plays GenreRoulette within one and the same album. ''Waiting For Cousteau'' is a prime example: The opener, "Calypso", is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, [[WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon Caribbean-inspired music with steel drums]]. "Calypso Part 2" is hard to tell because [[SongStyleShift it shifts styles halfway through]], and the second half is quite danceable. "Calypso Part 3" could pass as an {{instrumental}} electronic ballad. And the [[EpicRocking 45+-minute title track]] is Music/BrianEno-level {{Ambient}}.

** [[WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon Caribbean steel drums]] ("Calypso")

* WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon: "Calypso" was composed in a quite Caribbean style was recorded in Trinidad in collaboration with the steel drum orchestra Amoco Renegades. It does sound the part.
** Taken up to eleven at the ''Paris La Défense'' concert with the Amoco Renegades themselves, more percussion than the studio version and two colorful giant puppets, Mr. and Mrs. Merry Monarch.

The people who bought ''Oxygène'' and ''Équinoxe'' have never gotten over Jarre leaving his SignatureStyle in TheEighties, moving on with the development of electronic instruments, and trying new styles. ''Zoolook'' (1984, featuring Music/LaurieAnderson, Marcus Miller, and [[Music/KingCrimson Adrian Belew]], just to name a few guest musicians) was heavily based on vocal samples from dozens of languages, ''Revolutions'' (1988) had more Roland D-50 written over it than anything ever made by Music/{{Enya}}, ''Waiting For Cousteau'' (1990) was [[JustForFun/XMeetsY Jarre meets]] [[WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon steel drums]].

* AllGuitarsAreStratocasters: At least up to 1993. Jarre used to play a Fiesta red Strat Hank Marvin-style in his youth. Later on, he had several encounters with the real Hank Marvin and his Fiesta red Strat, first by the Shadows covering him back ("Equinoxe 5", 1979), then by Hank Marvin joining him ("London Kid", 1988), then by Hank Marvin covering him again ("Oxygène 4", 1993). The combo breaker was Patrick Rondat who did not play a Strat when he played for Jarre from 1993 on.
** Eventually [[AvertedTrope averted]] by Jarre himself during the concerts connected to ''Electronica'': At the end of "Conquistador", for the first time in decades, he was seen on a stage playing a guitar. But it was a Les Paul.

The 1993 album ''Chronologie'' saw Jarre on his way back to the roots with the dance styles of TheNineties combined with some analog synths and sounds used by Jarre in his more popular albums from TheSeventies; besides, it was Jarre's first album with all tracks given the album title and the track number as titles since ''Magnetic Fields'' (1981). ''Oxygène 7-13'', released in 1997 (intended to be a 20-years-on-Oxygène anniversary album but delayed by several months) was thoroughly analog and an almost complete return to Jarre's SignatureStyle, weren't it for some more contemporary dance beats in some parts.

* ''Chronologie'' (1993)

* AlbumClosure: Jarre loves them slow and sometimes even somber which is also why it's often the last tracks on his albums that can be {{Tear Jerker}}s. There are exceptions, though, for example ''Magnetic Fields'' which ends with a number that Jarre has played completely on a home organ as a musical bird flipped at the music industry and ''Chronologie'' which closes with a happy, danceable track.

* DigitalDestruction: The 1997 remaster of ''Chronologie'' was botched in a number of ways from reversed panning to leaving audible time-code clicks.

* HeartbeatSoundtrack: "Ron's Piece" has a sampled human heartbeat instead of drums. The piece basically begins when the heartbeat sets in, and a heartbeat sample is the very last note. Also, the album ''Chronologie'' starts and ends with synthesized heartbeats.

** "Sale of the Century" isn't really a song of itself but an interlude from the 1993 ''Europe In Concert'' tour based on the end of "Chronologie 5", but otherwise it counts.

** ''Chronologie'' opens with the nearly 11-minute "Chronologie Part 1".

** In TheNineties, there were dozens upon dozens of remixes of Jarre's material, mostly of tracks from ''Chronologie'' and ''Oxygène 7-13'' when they were new. So when Helios completely remade "Music/{{Equinoxe}} 4", [[InsistentTerminology they insisted in their version]] ''[[InsistentTerminology not]]'' [[InsistentTerminology being a remix]], but a CoverVersion.

** [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] by the beginning of "Chronologie 8" which is almost wedding compatible.

*** ''Chronologie'' ("Chronologie Part 1" through "8")

** A French accordion ("Chronologie 6", the instrument in question is actually an Italian Cavagnolo accordion)

* RemixAlbum: ''Jarremix'' (1993, mostly based on ''Chronologie''), ''Odyssey Through O2'' (1998, mostly based on ''Oxygène 7-13'').

* {{Retraux}}: ''Oxygène 7-13'', the 2007 ''Oxygène'' remake, and to a certain degree ''Chronologie''. [[AvertedTrope Averted]] with ''Oxygène 3'' which is what ''Oxygène'' might be if it had been made exactly 40 years later.

* SongStyleShift: Happens in several of Jarre's works, for example "Night In Shanghai", "Ethnicolor", "Calypso 2", "Digisequencer". Some of them are divided into subparts by fans to tell the sections from one another, especially if only one of them is played live (for example "Oxygène 5", "Equinoxe 8", "Magnetic Fields 1", "Oxygène 7", "Chronologie 1").

* SurrealMusicVideo: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIeAt5invw0 "Zoolookologie"]], often described by modern viewers as "{{vaporwave}} before vaporwave."

* TickTockTune: Most of ''Chronologie'' uses the ticking of clocks as either ambient noise or part of the rhythm. Bonus points for the use of an alarm sequence Jarre himself had composed for Swatch the previous year, sampled from an actual wristwatch.

* UncommonTime: "Chronologie 1" starts in what sounds like a polyrhythmic combination of 9/8 and something even weirder. The lack of drums or rhythmic accompaniment except for one aleatoric string line makes it even more confusing.

** and the grandson of André Jarre, GadgeteerGenius and co-inventor of the mixing desk; he probably wouldn't be where he is now without his grandpa's creativity
* FanCommunityNickname: In French, Jarre fans call themselves and each other "Jarriens".

* TheMetaverse: Jarre pioneered virtual reality concerts in 2018 in cooperation with [=TheWaveVR=] when he performed his new album ''Equinoxe Infinity'' in a virtual 3-D world. And when the COVID-19 crisis forced most other musicians and bands to stop gigging altogether, Jarre used this experience to play two concerts on the [=VRChat=] platform. The second one of these, ''Welcome To The Other Side'' which took place on New Year's Eve 2020, saw him in an illuminated (and intact) 3-D model of Notre-Dame.

* DigitalDestruction:
** The 24-bit {{remaster}}ing of Jarre's albums in 1997 along with the release of ''Oxygène 7-13'' dealt quite some damage. Examples:
*** The first remaster of ''Chronologie'' was botched in a number of ways from reversed panning to leaving audible time-code clicks.
*** It was decided to reduce the double albums ''The Concerts In China'' and ''Hong Kong'' to single albums. However, both albums originally contained more than 80 minutes of material each. While ''The Concerts In China'' only had some pauses reduced, ''Hong Kong'' lost half of "Fishing Junks At Sunset", the only track on the album that was actually recorded in Hong Kong (and even then, it was only recorded during the dress rehearsals).
*** A special case was ''Revolutions'': the intro to the TitleTrack sampled an unpublished composition by Kudsi Erguner, which was given to Jarre by ethnologist Xavier Bellinger. After Erguner successfully sued for copyright infringement, Jarre was disallowed from re-releasing "Revolutions" in its original form. Consequently, the song was replaced with a slight remix of the 1990 live version "Revolution, Revolutions" which means that the original "Revolutions" is only available on second-hand [=CDs=] that predate the '97 remaster. (Apparently, nobody minds his continuous use of a snippet of that piece on ''Destination Docklands''.)
*** [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] with the live album ''In Concert Houston[=/=]Lyon'': All tracks on this album, save for two, were shortened from the original live versions. A variant named ''Cities In Concert'' included all these songs in their full length plus two more, but it was available only as part of the CD box ''The Laser Years''. The 1997 {{remaster}} kicked ''In Concert Houston[=/=]Lyon'' out of the back catalog and replaced it with ''Cities In Concert'' in all its glory.
*** It gets complicated with ''Zoolook'': The original 1984 CD release contained the original versions of the title track and "Zoolookologie", so it's pretty much the same as the LP and MC releases. After a short production run, they were replaced by the single remixes in 1985 (they only slightly differed from the originals, but still), making digital copies of the original versions unavailable on new [=CDs=] and a sought-after rarity. The 1997 {{remaster}} reverted this, but rendered the remixes unavailable.
** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] with the [[EpicRocking very long]] and very {{Ambient}} title track of ''Waiting For Cousteau'' which had to be truncated from 47 minutes to just 22 to fit on an LP.
** The Apple Music/iTunes release of ''Equinoxe Infinity'' interrupts the between-song transitions heard in the physical edition (which are intact in the downloadable version provided by the included certificate), presumably to accommodate randomized play.

* RearrangeTheSong: Several Jarre classics got partly new accompaniments and especially drum parts for the ''Twelve Dreams of the Sun'', some of them to sound more Arabic. Also, the dance-pop/trance version of "Magnetic Fields 2" from the 1997 ''Oxygène Arena Tour''.

* ConceptAlbum: Several. Most of them, one could say.

* BoxedSet: To commemorate the tenth anniversary of ''Music/{{Oxygene}}'', Jarre released an eponymous box set in 1987 (one year ''after'' the album's decennial) on LP, CD, and cassette containing all of his studio albums from that one to ''Rendez-Vous'', plus the {{live album}}s ''The Concerts in China'' and ''Cities in Concert: Houston/Lyon''.

A description of Jean-Michel Jarre wouldn't be complete without mentioning his concerts. Jarre took both lightshows and audience sizes UpToEleven. His 1979 premiere concert with only him and some electronic instruments on a stage on the Place de la Concorde in Paris already gave him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest concert audience ever—one million. What they saw wasn't just a synth nerd in a keyboard castle but a show of lights and projections of previously unseen dimensions. In 1981, the British Embassy in the People's Republic of China got him to play five indoor concerts in Beijing and Shanghai as the first pop musician ever. Jarre's next live show in Houston, Texas, in 1986 was blown out of any proportions imaginable when he used just about all of downtown Houston's skyline as the backdrop (as in he had lights, laser projections, still images, and even movies shot onto the facades of several-100-feet-tall skyscrapers with skytrackers on their roofs and gigantic fireworks even above these) for a concert with which he beat his own record (more than 1.5 million spectators). He played a similar outdoor concert for Pope John Paul II in his hometown Lyons half a year later, he gave a show on a stage floating on the River Thames inmidst the ruins of the Queen Victoria Docks in London in 1988 during a phase of downright extremely bad weather, and he improved his own record a second time on a pyramid-shaped stage in front of Paris' brand-spanking-new skyscraper quarter La Défense in 1990 (for some 2.5 million people).

* TruckDriversGearChange: Taken UpToEleven in "London Kid" with modulations of "multiple" semitones. Twice.

** Taken UpToEleven at the ''Paris La Défense'' concert with the Amoco Renegades themselves, more percussion than the studio version and two colorful giant puppets, Mr. and Mrs. Merry Monarch.

* VariantCover: ''Equinoxe Infinity'' came out with two different covers at the same time, both picking up the "watcher" theme from ''Equinoxe'' again. None of them is limited, though.

*** It was decided to reduce the double albums ''The Concerts In China'' and ''Hong Kong'' to single albums. However, both albums originally contained more than 80 minutes of material each. While ''The Concerts In China'' only had some pauses reduced, ''Hong Kong'' lost half of "Fishing Junks At Sunset", the only track on the album that was actually recorded in Hongkong (and even that only during the dress rehearsals).
*** A special case was ''Revolutions'': Jarre had used the intro of the title track without permission and was now disallowed to publish it ever again. So "Revolutions" was replaced with a slight remix of the 1990 live version "Revolution, Revolutions" which means that the original "Revolutions" is only available on second-hand [=CDs=] that predate the '97 remaster. (Apparently, nobody minds his continuous use of a snippet of that piece on ''Destination Docklands''.)

** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] with the [[EpicRocking very long]] and very {{Ambient}} title track of ''Waiting For Cousteau'' which had to be truncated to fit on an LP.
** On ''Equinoxe Infinity'', the songs fade into one another--unless you buy it from Apple Music[=/=]iTunes, where they are separate tracks fading in and out. The reason for this is because the [=MP3=] format doesn't allow gapless playback. Jarre's official downloads come in lossless WAV, and they're basically the same as on CD.

** Music/{{Air}} ("Close Your Eyes")

In 2015, he started a project called ''Electronica'' in which he collaborated with a lot of big names in music, not only electronic music, such as [[Music/TheWho Pete Townshend]], Music/ArminVanBuuren, Music/LangLang, Creator/JohnCarpenter, Music/HansZimmer, Music/TangerineDream (their very last production with Edgar Froese), Music/{{Air}}, Music/LittleBoots ([[PromotedFangirl herself a big Jarre fan]]), [[Music/MassiveAttack 3D]], Music/{{Moby}}, [[Music/{{Erasure}} Vince Clarke]], Music/GaryNuman, Music/PetShopBoys or Music/CyndiLauper. "Exit" even includes a monologue by Edward Snowden.

* LongestSongGoesLast: ''Waiting For Cousteau'' closes with the title track which is longer than everything else on the album combined.

** Even after ''Music/{{Oxygene}}'', Jarre himself isn't beyond covering, although the few examples have been parts of concerts. "Fishing Junks at Sunset", played at most of Jarre's shows in what is China today, is a reworked piece of classical Chinese music, something even some die-hard fans don't know. "Salma Ya Salama" from the millennium ''The Twelve Dreams of the Sun'' is a covered Music/{{Dalida}} song. And several songs from the Gdańsk show ''Space of Freedom'' aren't composed by Jarre either.

* RepurposedPopSong: Jarre's music has been used as themes of several TV shows, parts of the album ''Oxygène'' went into the soundtrack of ''Film/{{Gallipoli}}'', and "Arpegiator" (from ''The Concerts In China'') is the background music of the hottest sex scene in ''Film/NineAndAHalfWeeks''.

* TrainSong: "OrientExpress".

*** The first remaster of ''Chronologie'' (which had been DDD from the very beginning, by the way) was botched in a number of ways from reversed panning to leaving audible time-code clicks.

*** A special case was ''Revolutions'': This was the album's first re-release ever. However, Jarre had used the intro of the title track without permission and was now disallowed to publish it ever again. So "Revolutions" was replaced with a slight remix of the 1990 live version "Revolution, Revolutions" which means that the original "Revolutions" is only available on second-hand [=CDs=]. (Apparently, nobody minds his continuous use of a snippet of that piece on ''Destination Docklands''.)

** On ''Equinoxe Infinity'', the songs fade into one another--unless you buy it from Apple Music[=/=]iTunes where they are separate tracks fading in and out. The reason for this is because the [=MP3=] format doesn't allow gapless playback. Jarre's official downloads come in lossless WAV, and they're basically the same as on CD.