Felix Da Housecat - Madame Hollywood (feat. Miss Kittin)

2024-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

Felix Da Housecat delivers a sharp blend of electro-house and electroclash with Madame Hollywood. The track is edgy and glamorous at once, but the glamour is held at arm’s length: the beat is lean and synthetic, and the voice on top treats stardom with ironic boredom.

Song Summary

“Madame Hollywood” pairs Felix Da Housecat’s production with Miss Kittin’s distinctive, half-spoken vocal. The title names a persona, a star seen from the inside, and the song plays the allure and emptiness of Hollywood fame straight-faced, which is where its humour comes from. Kittin and Felix met at a Swiss festival while she was touring with The Hacker, and the next day they wrote this song and “Silver Screen Shower Scene” in a friend’s small studio in Geneva.

Musical Breakdown

Intro: Setting the Scene

The song opens on the groove: a tight electro beat and synthesizers that sound consciously like the early 1980s, the source the whole album draws on.

Verse 1: Miss Kittin Takes the Spotlight

Miss Kittin enters closer to talking than singing. Her French-accented, deadpan delivery makes every line about fame and glamour sound like a shrug.

Chorus: The Catchy Hook

The title becomes the hook, repeated over the same machine pulse. It is a name, not a feeling, which suits a song about a public image.

Bridge: Electro Breakdown

Between the vocal sections the production comes forward, the electro groove carrying the track on its own; this is the dance-floor engine under the satire.

Verse 2 and Outro: Maintaining the Momentum

Kittin returns in the same cool register, and the track ends without changing its temperature. At under three minutes on the album, it is short and exact.

Concepts in Focus

Madame Hollywood is a classic of electroclash, the movement of the turn of the millennium that mixed 1980s electro and synth-pop with techno and a punk sense of irony. Kittenz and Thee Glitz, the album it comes from, blends early-1980s electronic pop with house, and Miss Kittin was one of the scene’s defining voices.

Her delivery is spoken word rather than song: a flat, almost bored voice that talks over the beat. Spoken vocals strip away the emotion a melody supplies, so the listener hears attitude instead, and a lyric about glamour sounds like a commentary on glamour. Compare her earlier track with The Hacker, Miss Kittin – Frank Sinatra, which uses the same voice on the same subject.

The music video, directed by Guy Sagy, makes the irony visual: elderly women lip-sync the song. The glamour persona is given to people that Hollywood’s idea of glamour leaves out.

Artistic Context

Felix Da Housecat, born Felix Stallings Jr., is a Chicago house producer; Miss Kittin is the French artist Caroline Hervé. The song is credited to both of them and produced by Felix. It first appeared in 2000 on the Paris shop Colette’s compilation Colette N°4, then on Kittenz and Thee Glitz, released by City Rockers in July 2001 and in the US by Emperor Norton in 2002. Madame Hollywood was the album’s third single, in 2002, after “Silver Screen Shower Scene” and “What Does It Feel Like?”.

Impact and Reception

The album earned generally favourable reviews (a Metacritic score of 78), although Pitchfork was unimpressed by Kittin’s vocal. The single reached number 11 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart and number 19 in Canada, and it drew remixes from Tiga, Ursula 1000, Richard Vission and Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band. Tiga’s “Mister Hollywood” version closed his DJ-Kicks mix, and Miss Kittin later performed the Ursula 1000 remix at Sónar. Resident Advisor ranked Kittenz and Thee Glitz 73rd among the top 100 albums of the 2000s.

Music Video

The video, directed by Guy Sagy, casts elderly women who lip-sync Miss Kittin’s words. It is a simple idea that does what the vocal does: it takes the gloss of Hollywood and turns it slightly, knowingly, sideways.

Felix Da Housecat - Silver Screen (Shower Scene)

2024-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

Felix Da Housecat made Silver Screen (Shower Scene) at the meeting point of house and the cold electronics of early-1980s synth-pop, the sound soon called electroclash. It is sensual and mysterious rather than euphoric, energetic in its beat but cool in its voice, like a film star who will not quite look at the camera.

Song Summary

The track’s melody is sampled from “Passion” by The Flirts, an early-1980s dance record, in its Ben Liebrand remix. Over it the French artist Miss Kittin delivers a lyric written by Tommie Sunshine, half sung and half spoken, its imagery drawn from the film world the title names. Felix produced it with his collaborators Dave the Hustler, who arranged and mixed it and played the strings in the breakdown, and Tommie Sunshine; the three share the writing credit. The memorable detail is the distance in Kittin’s voice: she sounds like she is narrating a scene she is also starring in.

Musical Breakdown

Intro: Setting the Atmosphere

The borrowed synth melody opens the track, glossy and slightly sinister, and the electro beat falls in underneath.

Verse 1: A Sensual Invitation

Miss Kittin enters in her deadpan, accented delivery. Her voice is not a sample but a performance made for the track, and it carries the narrative.

Chorus: The Dancefloor Anthem

The hook is the melody itself, repeated until it sticks, with the beat driving underneath.

Bridge: Cinematic Interlude

The sleeve credits a spoken “talk break” to Kittin and Felix and a strings breakdown to Dave the Hustler: the moment where the track turns into a little scene from the film its title promises.

Verse 2 and Outro: Climax and Resolution

The melody and the voice return, and the track runs out on its groove rather than on a big finish.

Concepts in Focus

Silver Screen is built on sampling. The melody that everyone remembers comes from The Flirts’ “Passion”, in the version remixed by the Dutch producer Ben Liebrand. Felix’s album mixed early-1980s electronic music, in the spirit of ZE Records artists like Cristina, with house, and this sample is that idea in one gesture: an old synth-pop line placed inside a modern club frame.

The track also had a long life in remix. The original 12-inch on City Rockers in 2001 carried remixes by FC Kahuna and Laurent Garnier; later versions came from Adult. and Thin White Duke, whose mix Resident Advisor placed among the top 100 tracks of the 2000s. In 2022 David Guetta reworked it with Felix and Kittin, twenty-one years after the original.

And it travelled as a soundtrack. It plays in the 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and appears in the video games Midnight Club II, SSX 3 and The Getaway: Black Monday. For many listeners of that generation, a racing or snowboarding game was where they first heard it.

Above all, Silver Screen is a founding record of electroclash: Miss Kittin’s cool, accented narration, the early-1980s synth melody and the fascination with glamour and fame are the scene’s whole vocabulary in four and a half minutes.

Artistic Context

Felix Da Housecat, the Chicago producer Felix Stallings Jr., was a second-generation Chicago house artist by the time he made Kittenz and Thee Glitz. Silver Screen was the album’s first single, released on the UK label City Rockers in 2001, and the album followed in the UK that year and in the US on Emperor Norton in 2002. It was made with Tommie Sunshine, Miss Kittin, Dave the Hustler and others, and it became one of the defining records of electroclash.

Impact and Reception

The single reached number 39 on the UK Singles Chart and number 2 on the UK Dance chart. Miss Kittin put the Laurent Garnier remix on her own DJ mix album On the Road, and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force covered the song at the Big Day Out in 2004. Kittenz and Thee Glitz scored 78 on Metacritic and was placed at number 73 in Resident Advisor’s top 100 albums of the 2000s.

Music Video

The embedded clip is the track as published on Felix Da Housecat’s own channel. Beyond its own visuals, the song’s screen life has been in film and games, from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to SSX 3, and in 2022 David Guetta’s rework came with a new official video made in collaboration with the Smiley brand, giving the track a second visual identity two decades on.

Sonic Playground - electro-house

Felix Da Housecat - Madame Hollywood (feat. Miss Kittin)

Genre and Mood

Song Summary

Musical Breakdown

Intro: Setting the Scene

Verse 1: Miss Kittin Takes the Spotlight

Chorus: The Catchy Hook

Bridge: Electro Breakdown

Verse 2 and Outro: Maintaining the Momentum

Concepts in Focus

Artistic Context

Impact and Reception

Music Video

Felix Da Housecat - Silver Screen (Shower Scene)

Genre and Mood

Song Summary

Musical Breakdown

Intro: Setting the Atmosphere

Verse 1: A Sensual Invitation

Chorus: The Dancefloor Anthem

Bridge: Cinematic Interlude

Verse 2 and Outro: Climax and Resolution

Concepts in Focus

Artistic Context

Impact and Reception

Music Video