It’s not every day that one of your songs gets chosen to help advertise a high-end fashion house, especially when it’s going to be sung by an Oscar winner. But for Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand, that just happened.
As CHARTattack.com reports, Franz Ferdinand’s song “The Eyes Of Mars” will appear in a television commercial for the internationally famous and hugely popular brand Dior. The song features the vocal chords of Oscar winner Marion Cotillard. She won the Academy Award for best actress in 2008 for her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. She was recently seen running alongside Johnny Depp in Public Enemies, and more recently seen singing alongside Daniel Day-Lewis in Rob Marshall’s musical Nine. She also acts as the current face for the French brand.
The ad is for Lady Dior handbags and shows Cotillard as a working girl by day and a lounge singer by night.
So we have done a lot of interviews at andPOP but we are always coming across something new when we interviews musicians, actors, etc. What was the cool thing from this interview? Franz Ferdinand used human bones as instruments on this album. Yes human bones. Definitely unique but if their position on the charts is any indication, it seems to have worked.
The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, The Yeah Yeahs Yeahs and Amy Winehouse are among the acts slated to perform at this year’s Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, organizers announced Friday.
The event’s tenth installment will run from April 17 to 19 in Indio, Calif.
Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, who will headline opening night, released this statement: “I have heard that Coachella is one of the greatest festivals in the world. I’m really excited to get out there and rock!”
Others on the bill include Morrissey, The Cure, Silversun Pickups, The Ting Tings, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, The Crystal Method, We Are Scientists and Lupe Fiasco.
Canadians are also well-represented, with K’naan, Crystal Castles, Billy Talent, MSTRKRFT, Fucked Up, Junior Boys and revered songwriter Leonard Cohen in the lineup.
Tickets for the festival are now available through Ticketmaster.
For more details, check out the official Coachella website here.
Can’t wait until Tuesday to hear the new Franz Ferdinand album?
You can head over to the Scottish band’s MySpace page, where “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand” is now streaming in its entirety ahead of its official Jan. 27 release date.
“Tonight” is the band’s third album and followup to 2005′s “You Could Have It So Much Better.”
“I can picture a marquee outside a theatre saying ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand,’” frontman Alex Kapranos previously told NME.com, in explaining the title. “There’s a sense of anticipation.”
The album was produced by Dan Carey, who has worked with the likes of Lily Allen and Kylie Minogue.
One of the tracks, “Lucid Dreams,” has already been featured on the soundtrack to the “Madden NFL 09″ video game.
Click here to stream the entire album.
The band will play a string of European dates in the coming months to back the new release. They have also scheduled one North American date so far, Jan. 30 at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles.
Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos will have a cookery book published later this year, reports NME.com.
?Sound Bites? is a compilation of the weekly food columns Kapranos has been writing for the Guardian newspaper in the last six months, and will also feature additional new material.
The book will be illustrated by the band’s touring drummer and keyboard player, Andrew Knowles, who is a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art.
Franz Ferdinand will play music festivals T In the Park and Oxegen in the summer. The band will also headline The Carling Weekend: Reading And Leeds in August, alongside Muse and Pearl Jam.
Indie acts gone mainstream are now going cross-country. Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand are teaming up with Washington quartet Death Cab for Cutie for a co-headlining North American tour this spring.
Representatives for both bands’ labels officially announced plans for the “tour of which dreams are made” on Thursday. The shows will kick off in Portland, Ore. on March 22 before closing out on April 26 in Calgary, Alta.
No date has been announced yet for when tickets will go on sale, but it is epected to be sometime around Feb. 9 or 10.
Dates for the Death Cab for Cutie/Franz Ferdinand co-headlining tour:
3/22 – Portland, OR @ Memorial Coliseum
3/23 – Sacramento, CA @ Memorial Auditorium
3/24 – Reno, NV @ Reno Hilton Pavilion
3/27 – Tucson, AZ @ University of Arizona
3/29 – Austin, TX @ The Backyard
3/30 – Houston, TX @ Verizon Wireless Theater
3/31 – Dallas, TX @ Nokia Theatre
4/7 – Durham, NC @ Duke University
4/8 – Camden, NJ @ Tweeter Center
4/9 – Ithaca, NY @ Cornell University
4/11 – Washington, DC @ Constitution Hall
4/12 – Boston, MA @ Agganis Arena
4/13, 14 – New York, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom
4/15 – Montreal, QC @ CEPSUM at University of Montreal
4/17 – Toronto, ON @ Docks Concert Theatre
4/18 – Detroit, MI @ State Theatre
4/19 – Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
4/20 – St. Paul, MN @ Northrop Auditorium
4/23 – Winnipeg, MT @ Burton Cummings Theater for Performing Arts
4/25 – Edmonton, AB @ Shaw Conference Centre
4/26 – Calgary, AB @ Stampede Corral
The Land Down Under will be getting a big blast of music in 2006.
The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand and veteran rockers Iggy & the Stooges are just a few of the big-name acts confirmed to appear at the 2006 Big Day Out festival tour, which will traverse Australia and New Zealand next January and February.
The event kicks off Jan. 20 in Auckland and then moves into Australia for shows in Gold Coast (Jan. 22), Sydney (Jan. 26), Melbourne (Jan. 29), Adelaide (Feb. 3) and Perth (Feb. 5).
The initial list of performers also includes Kings Of Leon, the Mars Volta, AFI, Sleater-Kinney, Soulwax/2ManyDJs, the Magic Numbers, the Living End, Cut Copy, the End Of Fashion and Youth Group.
Among other homegrown acts confirmed to appear are Gerling, Magic Dirt, Faker, Wolf & Cub and the Grates.
A second line-up announcement is expected in December.
Tickets for the event go on sale Oct. 14.
The upcoming Big Day Out will mark the White Stripes? return to the BDO tour after their last appearance in 2002. Since then, the Detroit duo has released two critically-acclaimed albums and sold a quarter of a million albums in Australia alone.
“For 2006 we searched the globe for just the right acts to come and hang out with everyone,” event organizers Ken West and Vivian Lees said in a statement, according to the Daily Telegraph.
“It is after all the world’s biggest travelling summer camp.
“Let’s hope we all get along, have fun and hear some great music along the way.”
The annual festival costs between $21 million and $25 million to produce, and is now in its 14th year.
Last year’s Big Day Out featured the Beastie Boys, System of a Down, the Chemical Brothers, the Hives, the Donnas and the Polyphonic Spree. Other acts who have performed in previous years include Foo Fighters, Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Metallica, the Strokes, the Streets and Black Eyed Peas.
One of the hardest working bands in the world, Franz Ferdinand, who always seem to be touring, will hit the road once again in September.
A new album is expected on October 4, but the Scottish gents will hit the road in September.
Tour dates (according to MTV):
9/20 – Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
9/21 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
9/22 – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theatre
9/23 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
9/25 – Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits
9/27 – Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
9/28 – Magna, UT @ Great Salt Air
10/1 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
10/2 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
10/3 – Portland, OR @ Rose Garden Arena
10/4 – Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum Theatre
10/6 – San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
10/7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theatre
10/9 – San Diego, CA @ SDSU Open Air Theatre
10/11 – Las Vegas, NV @ Hard Rock Hotel – The Joint
10/17 – New York, NY @ The Theater at Madison Square Garden
10/18 – Toronto, ON @ Ricoh Coliseum
