The magazine “8:30 p.m. on Saturday” (Twitter), presented live by Laurent Delahousse just after the 8 p.m. news on France 2, recounts an unprecedented moment in the life of a personality, behind the scenes of an event or a place belonging to collective history. Reports that reveal “the little story in the big one”…
The day when > John Lennon understood the power of his image
In 1969, protests against the Vietnam War were at their height, and John Lennon, the former Beatles, composed Give Peace a Chance (Let’s give peace a chance). Fifty years later, this same song was chosen by hundreds of public and private European radio stations to be broadcast at the same time, in March 2022, in millions of homes after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. How did one of the leaders of the Beatles transform over the years into a peace activist? Why did this title recorded in a hotel room during his honeymoon with his wife Yoko Ono become an emblem? “8:30 p.m. on Saturday” tells how John Lennon knew how to use the power of his image.
And also, songs with a message, a child’s voice under the bombs…
News > From Sting to Scorpions, soft power
After the start of the war in Ukraine, British singer Sting took up the song Russians. One of its historical titles composed in 1985 evokes the cold war, the fracture between the blocks of East and West and implores the people to face what can bring them together. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the ability of artists to circulate messages and shake up certainties despite political embargoes has been called soft power. From Sting to Scorpions, two cult songs have each played a role in international relations between the two blocs.
Bonuses > Amelia, the little “Snow Queen”
In a bomb shelter in kyiv, a little girl sang a title from the animated feature film in early March 2022 Snow Queen. She has now taken refuge in Poland with her grandmother while her parents have remained in the Ukrainian capital. It was this time in front of thousands of people that she sang the Ukrainian anthem.
> Replays of France Télévisions news magazines are available on the Franceinfo website and its mobile application (iOS & Android), “Magazines” section.
– The Beatles, four boys in the centuryFrédéric Granier (ed. Perrin).
– Revolution, the Beatles, Jacques Volcouve, Pierre Merle (ed. Fayard).
– Broken Music, My MemoirsSting, (ed. Babelio).
– Scorpions, the complete in 367 bitesGuillaume Gaguet (published by Le Camion Blanc).
– Wind of Change, the Scorpions StoryMartin Popoff (Wymer Publishing).
– Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dnepropetrovsk, 1960-1985Sergei I. Zhuk (ed. Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Johns Hopkins University Press).
Non-exhaustive list.
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