YMMV / Jean-Michel Jarre

• And You Thought It Would Fail: The major labels in France must have learned a valuable lesson after rejecting Oxygène thinking Electronic Music will never catch on because it did just that, and how: Oxygène was published by the small jazz label Disques Motors where Jarre had been before, it sold ten million copies right away, Jarre became one of the most famous French musicians ever, and the future of pop and especially dance music itself was electronic.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • Most fans agree that Jarre had one after Metamorphoses. It started when he fell out with his publisher, Francis Dreyfus. He tried to get out of his contract but still had to deliver two albums, so he churned out Sessions 2000, an electronic jazz improvisation album that saw him in a genre and a way of playing that wasn't his^note the other album, titled "Experimental 2001" was never released. The immediate post-Dreyfus albums didn't fare much better with the mediocre-at-best Geometry Of Love and finally the more-than-controversial Téo & Téa which at least delivered two tracks that work well live. His concerts went from nice to behold but weird to listen to straight to way too obvious miming fests. He eventually got out of it when he took the re-recorded and expanded Oxygène to live stages from 2007 on.
  • Some older fans who had the chance to listen to Oxygène or at least Équinoxe when it was new see everything after these two albums as Jarre's Dork Age. Maybe they're willing to accept Magnetic Fields and/or Oxygène 7-13 as well.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: There are several ways to annoy Jarre fans. For example:
  • Spell his second name "Michael" or, worse yet, "Michelle".
  • Pronounce his first name "John" or "Gene".
  • Pronounce his second name "Michael" or "Mitchell".
  • Pronounce his last name "Jarray".
  • Refer to numbered album tracks by the album title, e.g. refer to Jarre's biggest hit "Oxygène 4" simply as "Oxygène".
  • Don't even try to get the numbers right.
  • Confuse his concert dates and/or venues.
  • While you're at it, downplay the audience sizes because you can't believe that so many people came to one concert.
  • Claim that Maurice Jarre financed his son's career. Maurice Jarre moved to Hollywood when his son was three years old, and the next time they got into contact was in the 21st century.
  • Claim that Jarre and his co-musicians mime to full playback at all their concerts. While this did happen in the mid-2000s, it caused such a backlash that Jarre didn't even use the usual "fall-back" backing tracks at his following shows for years.
  • Alleged collabs between Jarre and Vangelis and/or Mike Oldfield. They're obvious fakes. Jarre expressed an interest in collaborating with both artists, but came to view Oldfield's style as "too acoustic" (despite being a fan of his work) and was unable to approach Vangelis before the latter's death in 2022.
  • It's "Last Rendez-vous" or "Ron's Piece" — and not "Sixth Rendez-vous" or "Rendez-vous 6".
• Genius Bonus: "Millions Of Stars". What may seem like Word Salad Lyrics are in fact musical chords.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • It's incredible how many fans Jarre has in the United Kingdom and in Poland (even before 2005's Space Of Freedom concert).
  • Germans love Jarre, too: During the 1993 Europe In Concert tour, the Berlin gig was the only one that sold out so quickly that it had to be repeated a day later.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In a 1997 interview about Oxgène 7-13, when asked which Oxygène he preferred, Jarre answered in jest, the third one, the one he'll make in another two decades. In 2016, he released Oxygène 3.
  • In 1996, when Oxygène 7-13 was heavily discussed but far from its release date, it was often referred to as Oxygène 2. 20 years later, along with the release of Oxygène 3, it was actually renamed Oxygène 2, at least for a box set.
  • For his millenial concert in Egypt, Jarre had to change "Revolution, Revolutions" into "Evolutions" and replace each instance of the word "revolution" with "evolution" because the word "revolution" was banned in Egypt. Eleven years later came the Jasmine Revolution.
• Misattributed Song: Gershon Kingsley's "Pop Corn" is often attributed to Jean Michel Jarre. Jarre did cover it in 1972 under the pseudonyms Pop Corn Orchestra (artist) and Jamie Jefferson (only credited member of the Pop Corn Orchestra), but he isn't the original artist. Maybe people confuse it with "Oxygène 4" which has got a somewhat similar hookline.
• Signature Song: "Oxygène 4".
• Song Association: Seems not to have happened although "Oxygène 4" can be heard in Grand Theft Auto IV.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Common fan opinion on almost all of Jarre's live releases ever because most of them have been heavily edited, shortened, overdubbed, remixed, even reordered which is the very reason why there are so many bootlegs of Jarre shows. Jarre's first concert to ever find a wide release unshortened was the show in Beijing 2004, and even this only after fans complained and sent masses of mails to the publisher, demanding a full release of the concert. They succeeded—the single DVD Live In Beijing was replaced by the THX-certified double DVD plus CD Jarre In China.
  • Also, the common reaction of everyone who got to know Jarre through Oxygène and Équinoxe back then when hearing any of his later music.
• Vindicated by History: Jarre's signature albums Oxygène and Équinoxe received mostly negative reviews at the time of its release, as the contemporary music press was more interested in the developing UK punk scene and thus hostile to most electronic music; one review of Équinoxe outright called it boring. Today though, both albums are considered electronica classics.

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