About the selection

France 3 confirmed its participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2012
Once again, they have decided to go with an internal selection.
They decided to ask Indonesian star Anggun to represent them. Anggun has expressed the wish to perform a bilingual (French and English) up tempo song in Baku.

About Anggun

Anggun, whose full name is Anggun Cipta Sasmi, is an Indonesian singer-songwriter. She was born 29th April 1974 in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.
Her music career started back in 1986, when she released an album in Indonesia: Dunia Aku Punya. Her success in Indonesia continued with songs such as Mimpi (1989) and Tua Tua Keladi (1990). Mimpi was ranked as #47 on the list of 150 best Indonesian records of all time. Tua Tua Keladi brought Anggun the award for Most Popular Indonesian Artist in 1990 and 1991. Further albums like Anak Putih Abu Abu and Nocturno established her image as one of the Indonesian ‘Lady Rockers’.
Her career in Europe started in 1995. After following a course at the Alliance Française to learn to speak French fluently, Anggun recorded her first French album in 1997: Au Nom De La Lune. The first single of that album, La Neige Au Sahara, immediately became a hit in Belgium and France. It even was the most-played song on the French radio in 1997.

She also released an international version of that album, with the title Snow On The Sahara (in some countries it was simply called Anggun) that same year. It was released in over 35 countries worldwide. The album sold over 1 million copies worldwide and confirmed Anggun’s worldwide success.
2000 was a spectacular year for Anggun. Not only did she get the French nationality, she also ended her marriage with Georgea. She continued her music career with another French album, called Désirs Contraires. This album was less successful than her first one. Though the English version (Chrysalis) enjoyed the most success. It was a huge change for Anggun, seeing that she wrote half the album herself. Still Reminds Me became a great hit across Europe and Asia. It especially meant the establishing of Anggun’s career in Italy and Latin America (especially Brazil).

In the years after, Anggun worked on several (successful) duets.
Her new solo single would one be released in 2004: Être Une Femme, which charted in France and Switzerland.
The same year she received the highly prestigious Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, a French cultural distinction for her worldwide success in the music industry.
In 2006, she released a Best Of-album, with most of her hits on it. It also contained a new version of her 1989 hit Mimpi.
Her latest work is from 2011. Her latest single was Hanyalah Cinta. It was also released in English (Only Love) and French (Mon Meilleur Amour). A more ‘European’ version in French was called Je Partirai.

France at the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest

France also used the internal selection in 2011. They picked young tenor Amaury Vassili to represent them in Düsseldorf.
His song, Sognu, was in Corsican. It was the second time we heard Corsican on the Eurovision stage: Patrick Fiori came fourth in 1993 with his song Mama Corsica, which was partially in Corsican.
Amaury rose to being one of the biggest favourites to win Eurovision 2011. The betting odds for a French victory rose to 1/2 with some companies, odds not even Alexander Rybak achieved in 2009.
Unfortunately for France, their opera song did not achieve what people thought it would achieve: Sognu ended on a disappointing 15th place, with 82 points.