Bleu noir

Bleu noir is the eighth studio album by the French singer Mylène Farmer, released on 6 December 2010.

Bleu noir is Farmer's first album produced without her longtime collaborator Laurent Boutonnat. Instead, she collaborated with Moby (with whom she had previously recorded duets in 2006 and 2008), the British band Archive and producer-songwriter RedOne, known for his work on Lady Gaga's hits "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance". Farmer herself wrote all the lyrics, which, characteristically, abound with literary references, notably drawing from the works of Pierre Reverdy.

The album received generally positive reviews from critics, who noted the variety of sounds and the contributions from different collaborators. Some went on to praise its overall quality and Mylène's vocal performances.

The first single from the album, "Oui mais... non," composed by RedOne, was released on 11 October 2010.

To promote the album, Farmer's record label set up a temporary website, which was launched on 3 November 2010. The music video for "Leila" premiered on the website on 22 November 2010, although there were no plans to release the song as a proper single.

The album entered the French Digital Chart at number one, with over 9,100 downloads. The following week the album also entered the physical chart at number one, selling 139,176 units in the first week. Both of these figures were records in terms of sales at the time. Bleu noir is Farmer's first studio album since 1991's L'Autre to outperform its predecessor in terms of national sales. By the end of 2010, Bleu noir had sold a total of 328,783 copies (312,978 in physical format and 15,805 downloads).

On 22 January 2011, it was announced that the second single would be the title track, set for release the following month. However, the release of "Bleu noir" was postponed until April due to the production of remixes. The music video for "Bleu noir" premiered on the album's promotional website on 16 March 2011.

The third single, "Lonely Lisa", was released on 4 July 2011.

As for other songs on the album, "Diabolique mon ange" was released to French radio on 4 December 2013, to promote Farmer's sixth live album, Timeless 2013.