Theme Ride Thursday: Allez! All the French Tunes You Need for Bastille Day and Your Tour de France Profiles

Bastille Day is July 14, the national holiday (la Fête Nationale) of France, one of the most important days in French history. The Tour de France happens in July. Beyond those events, bien sûr, there is always une bonne reason to play French music in your cycling classes all year round.

I’ve been using French music in my Tour de France stages since the mid-1990s. I believe I was one of the first master instructors to introduce certain French songs to the indoor cycling community in my Tour de France sessions at WSSC beginning in 2004 through 2010. These included now popular songs in cycling classes such as “Tu Es Foutu” by In-Grid, “Désenchantée” by Kate Ryan (and another version by Mylène Farmer), “Alors On Danse” by Stromae, and songs by the group Les Negresses Vertes. 

While I love discovering new French artists, I often find myself returning to many of the French tracks I used early in my Spinning career. I found some that truly inspired my riders to turn those pedals up those imaginary French Alpine passes, complete with attacks or long, emotional grinds up the steep French cols (passes). I also love to play classics such as Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” or George Trenet’s “Douce France” as we stretch—they lend a certain je ne sais quoi to our workout. You’ll find many of these tracks in the ICA Tour de France profiles. 

Over the years, I’ve curated one of the most comprehensive collections of classic and modern French songs for your Tour de France and Bastille Day celebrations in your cycling classes—or any class that warrants good foreign music. At the bottom of this post, ICA members can access my Spotify bucket playlist with 560 French songs of all genres: pop, rock, hip-hop, electronic, dance, and alternative. A second bucket playlist contains 60 classic French songs that are excellent as pre- and post-class music or for recoveries or interludes.

Bastille Day

As a longtime Tour de France fanatic, I’ve always celebrated Bastille Day in my classes with a TDF stage. Even better when you’re teaching a stage on July 14! But if describing a race in your classes is not your thing, simply play a fun selection of French songs, decorate the room with French flags, provide croissants after the ride, and do a little trivia about all things French and the story behind Le Quatorze Juillet.

Here are a few interesting facts to start with: Did you know that the French consume 11.2 billion glasses of wine per year? Or that there are about 1,000 kinds of cheese in France (of which, 400 are “official” and regulated)? Or that the croissant was actually invented in Austria?

The storming of the Bastille may have ignited the French Revolution, but it’s not what Bastille Day is based upon. The holiday celebrates the Fête de la Confédération, which took place one year later to commemorate the unity of the new French nation. Here are some more facts about Bastille Day and the real story about Marie Antionette’s oft-quoted alleged quip, “Let them eat cake.”

Tips for Using a Large Spotify Bucket Playlist

When you have a bucket playlist that is as large as this French collection, it can be somewhat overwhelming to select songs directly from here when you create your profile. So what I recommend is to create an intermediary playlist, what I call a “dump file” or “sample playlist” where you will put the songs that interest you the most. As I peruse the larger collection, I drag the songs that I like that fit the type of profile I am planning, making sure to include tracks with a wide variety of tempos, energy, and emotion. If you’re assembling a Tour de France stage, you’ll need songs for warm-ups, cool-downs, and recoveries along with your challenging climbs, fast flats, attacks and breakaways, and sprint finishes. This dump file should contain a fairly large number so you have choices, but not so many that you are overwhelmed; 30–40 songs is a good number. Then, when it comes time to create your playlist for your profile, go through your dump file to select the songs for your actual profile. If you need more, you can always return to the original larger bucket playlist. Sort the playlist by duration to find songs of a particular length. You can also use sortyourmusic, a third-party software that sorts your Spotify playlists and adds the bpm to every song. 

If you don’t use Spotify to teach your classes, you can still follow these bucket playlists using a free Spotify membership and create a dump file. Then, once you’ve narrowed it down, you can search for those songs in your preferred music resource, saving you hours and hours trying to find songs on your own. 

If you have a favorite French song that I haven’t included in my bucket playlist, please share it below in the comments. I continue to add new songs every year, so every suggestion is welcome.

Allez! Allez!