Let me tell you a story.

I live in Watford, near London, and my local Royal Mail delivery office thing (the building where you pick up the parcels you've missed out on because you weren't at home, if you will) is quite far away from the city centre. It's a forty-five minute walk from where I live. Over three kilometres. Not to be a lazy git or anything, but I am not about that life, and when I have to go, I have to get a lift or worse, get on an Uber. 

I had to do that today, to pick up my Architects ticket. I don't like being in taxis and Ubers. I'm not good at small talk, and nothing embarrasses me more than to be sat in a car for ten minutes with a complete stranger. However, I got lucky this time around, my driver was lovely. I ended up telling him I was French, he asked if I knew Vanessa Paradis and then he dropped me off at the post office. When I got back in the car after picking up my ticket, he said he was going to play a song for me, and he played Joe Le Taxi by the aforementioned Vanessa Paradis, and then kept playing her songs.

It reminded me of how much I love her.

It also inspired me to share my favourite French music.

I believe my taste in French music is more eclectic than my taste in music in general. Most of the time, I listen to everything in the alternative spectrum, but when it comes to my own country, my taste is more varied. Granted, France doesn't really have an alternative scene (spoiler alert : this list does not include Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!), but I think it mostly stems from the fact that my taste in French music is heavily influenced by my childhood, my family and the indie phase I left in 2008, back where I found it easier to write in French and spoke much less English.

• BB Brunes

BB Brunes are my all-time favourite French band. There, I said it.

I was quite literally obsessed with them when I was seventeen, eighteen. 2008 was the height of my embarrassing indie phase, my "I don't want to listen to what is mainstream" phase, and just like most girls my age at the time, I wore ill-fitted skinny jeans, flat shoes and sported a thick straight fringe I had to trim every single day because my hair grows so ridiculously fast. I was entirely on board with what we called the Nouvelle Scène Française (New French Scene) and all the French rock bands clearly inspired by Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes and iconic French singers/songwriters. 

BB Brunes' début album is called Blonde Comme Moi, and I listened to it so much that if the Spotify yearly statistics had been a thing back in the day, it would have topped every possible category. Me and my best friend at the time used to listen to it every time we would hang out, we'd blast it in her brother's car and sang along to every word. (I don't think we were entirely aware of everything we were singing along to). Blonde Comme Moi is gritty, energetic, fast and angsty, the songs are about stuff seventeen year old me couldn't relate to, like doing drugs,  getting into fist fights, drinking apple flavoured liquor until the small hours and prostitutes (not that twenty-eight year old me relates, but, you know) and I adored it. (I still do)

The song I've picked is Pas Comme Ca, which is about the band's former bass player leaving the band. (Trust ansgty me to have given it a different meaning at the time)

Say hello to Kyo, the closest thing to an emo band we've had this side of the Channel. (Even though, at the peak of their fame and career, they probably wouldn't have appreciated being called emo and were saying in interviews that they were heavier than Weezer) 

I was thirteen when they released their second album, Le Chemin (their first album, Kyo, is kinda like the first album your favourite indie band has released, you can only find it for £300 on Amazon and they fucking hate it anyway), and they hit it big. It was an era when you had rock music on television and mainstream radios. I used to find new bands to listen to on the radio and in French chart shows. In the middle of the sugary pop and the latin-inspired summer hits, we liked a loud guitar or two, so Kyo made it big. Everyone loved them. My classmates who liked rap and r'n'b loved them. My mother loved them. She bought the CD for herself, I borrowed it, never gave it back and listened to it so much it's a miracle it didn't melt in my stereo. (There was a really annoying scratch during my favourite song, though)

They broke up a couple of years later, then came back and I only ever briefly saw them live at a concert organised by a radio station in a small town in Picardy, they played three songs and by this time, the radio station had fully moved on from rock music to French pop sporting more autotune than words, and saying they stood out from the rest of the line up is a bit of an understatement.

The song I've picked is probably the emo anthem of France, Dernière Danse. One day, I'll get to hear it live and I'll probably ugly cry my heart out.

• Téléphone

In so many ways, me and my brother had similar after-school activities. I spent all my time at the local record store, listening to all the new music, preparing a list of what I would want for my birthday or Christmas. My brother used to drop by the local supermarket every day after school to listen to records and buy one when he'd saved up enough money after a car boot sale. I love the tales of him buying his first Iron Maiden records, experiencing the storm Michael Jackson releasing Thriller was, and listening to his favourite French band, Téléphone. 

I don't have a particular story of how I started listening to Téléphone, it was very likely because of my brother or mother, who both loved them. I'm pretty sure we've got some old records of theirs in our collections, some we've thrifted a couple of years ago, some my mum bought in the eighties. Téléphone were also her favourites, I remember her tapping her toes to the beat of their songs every time they were on TV. I'd have a hard time describing their music. They're a straight up rock band. Their songs are catchy and clever and well written. They split up but the whole damn country loves them so much that if they decided to come back, they'd probably sell out the Stade de France. This I can say. I can't really say more because they're so deeply linked to the story of my family. They're just one of these bands that take me back home, to seeing them on TV, seeing my mum sing along, learning every word to their songs as I watched yet another rock music loving youth in a singing contest cover one of their hits - a rite of passage if you sang on French television. (And a plague to hear so many people butcher Cendrillon)

They have many a hit song and many a banger, and I don't really have a specific favourite, but I do love Un Autre Monde. Ask any French person. That's a classic.

• France Gall

My mother was a teenager in the sixties, and some of her favourite music was from this era. All the famous French people of the decade - Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Eddy Mitchell, Françoise Hardy, Sheila, you name them, she loved them. Her favourite, though, was France Gall. She started out in the sixties by winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965 for Luxembourg, but her musical career exploded in the seventies after she met quite possibly the single most talented French songwriter, Michel Berger. She had a delicate voice and gorgeously written songs I have loved since I was a very small child.

I would have been, what, seven, eight years old, maybe. Every Sunday morning, rain or shine, me and my mother would go to the market. My mum was the queen of bargain hunting and she'd spend hours looking at all the stalls to find cool, yet cheap as chips clothes. If you see me wearing something that used to belong to my mum, there's a ninety-five percent chance she purchased it at the Argenteuil or Beauchamp markets on a Sunday morning in the eighties or nineties. It was always the same ritual - we'd start at Argenteuil, then go to Beauchamp, and finally Conflans. Argenteuil was a half-hour drive from where we lived and during the journey, my mum would always sing the songs she loved so much. She didn't even have a stereo in the car. She just sang, even though she couldn't sing in tune for the life of her, and by the time I was eight, I knew most of the words to France Gall's back catalogue. 

I'm not good at picking favourites when it comes to the soundtrack to my childhood, but Ella Elle L'a is the song I always listen to first. I just know it's a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.

• Vanessa Paradis.

When the Uber driver asked me if I knew Vanessa Paradis, he said something along the lines of "She's French, right? She married Johnny Depp, yeah?". So, yeah, Vanessa Paradis is French, she's been married to Johnny Depp, but the reason why I was reportedly dancing to her songs when I was a toddler was because she's a great singer. She started out in the eighties and released her first hit single, Joe Le Taxi, when she was about fourteen years old, and the song and its music video featuring teenage Vanessa in an oversized peach sweater in front of a New York taxi have been iconic on our side of the Channel since. She's spent a lot of her life being known as Johnny Depp's wife when she had an incredible musical career, in French and in English, to show for herself. 

I have always loved how timeless her music is. There's undeniably an eighties vibe to Joe Le Taxi, and in this day and age, I don't think anyone could write a song about a taxi driver who loves blues music, drinks rum and make it iconic, yet at the same time, it's still adored in France. She had some amazing music in the nineties, and her return in the noughties with the gorgeous Divine Idylle was acclaimed and a huge success. Not to be dramatic or anything, but if I had to pick someone to be the queen of France, it would probably be Vanessa Paradis.

Word is in the street that tiny little me used to dance to Be My Baby, and I do have the cassette tape somewhere, purchased in the nineties.

There will be at least one follow up to this list - a friendly reminder that I'm French.

A couple of days ago, the French version of the pop culture website Konbini published an article about their team members' favourite albums when they were teenagers. Every person got to pick fifteen albums that marked their life from age twelve to age nineteen and try to explain why it mattered. A lot of it is, sadly, "Sum 41 are shit and I thought I was punk" elitism, but I like the idea of the post in itself - here's why I am writing about the fifteen albums that I loved the most when I was a teenager.

This is a throwback to the years when I had long dark hair, when I wore short sleeved t-shirts over long sleeves all winter long, when I had trouble getting through the day at school without tripping on my own feet, when I had braces, when I wore gigantic Vans, when I wore dresses over jeans because I was trying so damn hard to be original, when I had an embarrassing indie phase (we all had one), and when no one wanted to be seen with me, and who could blame them. 

This is a tough list to make as, back then, I could barely afford CDs. We didn't have the Internet at home until I was seventeen and, until then, I had to be extremely resourceful to get my hands on music. I would borrow my friends' MP3 players, my brother's CDs, CDs off the library, tape songs off the radio. There aren't a lot of full albums I actually had access to.

That is the number one album I loved during my teenage years. I ADORED Evanescence - they were the first band I had posters of that wasn't a pop artist, and I wanted to be Amy Lee and dress like Amy Lee and look like Amy Lee. My brother bought me Fallen for Christmas when I was thirteen, and to this day, it's a wonder I can still play the damn thing as I would listen to it on repeat. We used to go on day trips to Picardy or Normandy (don't ask) and I would start playing it as soon as we left home and would just stop it when we got there. It remains one of my favourite albums, and the first rock/metal album I loved.