How I Discovered: Joe Dassin

People pride themselves on having non-mainstream or unusual taste in music, but I can say that I only know two other people who had heard of French crooner Joe Dassin before I introduced them to his music. The first was my good friend Jack, who first showed me his song "Salut" after discovering it somehow in middle school. We laughed at the song's obviously somber yet otherwise inaccessible message and its cheesy 70s vibe and forgot about Joe Dassin for a long time. The second person to have heard of Joe Dassin was one of my closest friends, a French exchange student who cracked up and wondered how on earth I had heard of him.
As I later came to discover, Joe Dassin is basically the French equivalent of Barry Manilow. I think that says it all, really.
It should come as no surprise at this point that my exploration of Dassin's music was greatly facilitated by my decision to subscribe to Spotify last year. Now Joe Dassin is more than a punchline to me; he is the man responsible for the hauntingly romantic "Et Si Tu N'Existais Pas (And If You Did Not Exist)," the bouncy and fun "Les Champs-Èlysées," and even some English songs like "Sunday Times." It's good to really mix things up every now and then, and Joe Dassin is an extreme outlier in my music library.

Favorite album: Joe Dassin (1975)
Favorite songs: "Salut," "Les Champs-Èlysées," "Piano mécanique," "Carolina (Sad Sweet Dreamer)"