Pushing his metro metaphor to the ultimate extreme, Pagny has chosen to include a map of the Paris underground in his CD booklet, replacing station names with those of songwriters, musicians and producers who worked on his new album. Needless to say, the metro map links up the crème de la crème of the French music world, shuttling from top studio musicians - such as Laurent Vernerey, Olivier Schultheis, Didier Bennarosh, Arnaud Dunoyer de Segonzac and Jean-Yves d’Angelo - through an impressive collection of songwriters including Pascal Obispo, David Hallyday, Art Mengo, Lionel Florence, Gérard Presgurvic and Didier Golemanas.
Needless to say, with the participation of such an exclusive selection of French wordsmiths, Châtelet-Les Halles is not exactly given to understatement. And Pagny rallies himself to the cause, revving his voice up full throttle and proving he has the loudest, brashest vocal style since French 'variété' veteran Johnny Hallyday! Judging by the awesome amount of decibels Pagny musters on tracks like Un mot de Prévert and La Légende de Carlos Gardel (which, we note in passing, features a rather incongruous burst of flamenco guitar), some might compare the singer's style to trimming the lawn with a combine-harvester or lighting a candle with a flame-thrower. Egged on by his recent award for "Best French Singer", Pagny appears compelled to push his vocal chords to the limit on every song, abandoning all thoughts of modesty, murmuring or nuance.

In short, Châtelet-Les Halles is a 'powerful' album. Not powerful in the Johnny Hallyday sense of the term - i.e. a heap of heaving muscles and sweat dripping from rock-star brow. No, Pagny's is more of an interior strength, driven by a stubborn need for self-assertion (and one hell of a diaphragm!) For there are hidden depths to Pagny, hidden wounds and unhealed scars which glimmer just beneath the surface as the "Best French Singer" belts out his songs of solitude, pain and betrayal. At the tender age of 39, Pagny sings with the maturity of Reggiani at 50 or Léo Ferré at 60, with the cracking voice of a 'survivor' recounting all the traumas and troubles he's lived through. On Châtelet-Les Halles Pagny's songwriters have been careful to steer away from the Hallyday myth. Not for Pagny the ignominy of sitting astride a Harley in full leather gear with a teenage girlfriend on his arm - Pagny gets to be an ultra-modern Ridley Scott-style superhero, battling his way through life, unconscious of its pitfalls and dangers!
Châtelet-Les Halles is an album of deep masculine emotions, compassion and the affirmation of human values - c.f. La Solitude, Comment je saurai (a song which bears traces of Goldman-style influences), the romantic Italian flourish of L’Air du temps and Dix choses. Pagny's vocals - which sound even darker and huskier than usual - are cloaked in an eclectic mix of modern styles, producers throwing in a touch of electro here, a burst of acoustic guitar there and the odd symphonic string section. There's no doubt about it, Châtelet-Les Halles is Pagny's bid for musical maturity. Full of finely-crafted songs and expert production - and without the overly commercial style of a hit-formula album à la Zazie or Pascal Obispo - Châtelet-Les Halles does not perhaps achieve everything it sets out to do, but it is, unmistakably, a very fine French 'variété' album.