• News

• All

Jun 23, 2015 By Christopher Roberts Jean-Michel Jarre

“Glory” is a collaboration between two French electronic music legends, past and present: Jean-Michel Jarre (who emerged in the 1970s) and M83 (who’s been an Under the Radar favorite for the last decade). The song premiered back in May and now we have the video for it.

The video seems to be about the futility or ridiculousness of sports. An archer keeps shooting himself in the back. A gymnastics routine turns into a pole dance.

Lisa Paclet directed the video. She explained its concept as such:

“When I listened to ‘Glory,’ I was struck by the lyrics ‘we could never have it all’ that, to me, crystalized a very contemporary feeling of impotence. Jean-Michel Jarre told me he wanted the video to be ‘dark and sunny,’ so I opted for a slightly sardonic take on the concept of ‘glory.’ I wanted to glorify useless action though a series of absurd sports, preformed by athletes that run after unreachable, constantly shifting goals. Their performances are scrutinized by a uniform, stoic, public whose reaction to their efforts is synchronized and coordinated like a well-oiled machine. As the clip progresses, the athletes subtly rebel against their pointless task though deliberate action of failure, breaking the repetitive cycle to which they are constrained. Their failures reveal a breach of humanity, which ricochets within the public, who in turn reacts in a progressively entropic fashion.”

The song will feature on a forthcoming, as-yet-untitled, new album from Jarre, which will also feature collaborations with Gesaffelstein (“Conquistador”), Tangerine Dream (“Zero Gravity,” recorded prior to the passing of Edgar Froese), and 3D of Massive Attack (“Watching You”). Steve Angello of Swedish House Mafia also recently remixed “Glory” and you can stream that below too.