Ou Est Le Soleil? (song)

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Album This song officially appears on the Flowers In The Dirt Official album.

Timeline This song has been officially released in 1989

Oriental Nightfish

Out Of Sight

Master release

Flowers In The Dirt

By Paul McCartney

Related sessions

This song has been recorded during the following studio sessions

Recording "Ou Est Le Soleil?"

Jun 23, 1988

Mixing "Ou Est Le Soleil?"

Dec 10, 1988

"Ou Est Le Soleil?" remixing

April 20-21, 1989

Other 1989 songs for the dance floors

Good Sign

Officially appears on This One

Party Party

Officially appears on Party Party

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Song facts

“Où Est Le Soleil?” is a dance tracked released as a bonus track on the CD & cassette editions of “Flowers In The Dirt“. Quite wacky, as Paul described it by himself ; and nonetheless multiple remixes have been published.

Paul McCartney in “Club Sandwich 52, Summer 1989“:

“A very wacky thing where we decided to make something up…Trevor said ‘Have you got anything for one of the verses?’ I said ‘Well I’ve got this really silly idea…’, which is like just some French words that say ‘Ou est le soleil? Dans la tete. Travaillez.’ Those are the complete lyrics…So we’ve got this silly French dance track now, which I love!

Club Sandwich No 52 Summer 1989

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From “In Their Own Words: The Producers discuss McCartney’s Flowers in the Dirt“, by Super Deluxe Edition blog:

[…] Trevor Horn: I thought we’d done pretty well, very short bursts and everything was good but if I’m honest, by I think by the time it got to Ou Est Le Soleil I’d been sucked into it a bit. I always see part of it was his personality, he was such good fun to work with him and he was so full of beans. But it sort of developed from a jam I think. I think Steve had a little bit of writing on it. Not officially, but I think he did.
Stephen Lipson: The night before, he said “well why don’t we come in tomorrow morning and just see what happens.” We came in the next day and he goes “anyone got any ideas?” I went “yes, I have”. I hit play on my computer and, forgetting the vocal and backwards guitar – [Steve plays the track from the start for about 50 seconds] – that came out from beginning to end. Which is why Trevor says what he said. And then Paul put seven words in French on one note on the top and said he had written the song, which actually, [as] he said it is lyrics and melody, you can’t really argue. I had a discussion with him about it and you know what… it worked out fine. I think I got an arrangement credit or something, and we did some deal. Whatever. But it is fine, he didn’t want to give me a writing credit and I think that is his prerogative. It would have been nice, but it is his prerogative. And it doesn’t make me think any less of the man.
Trevor Horn: You know I had a reasonable idea of how good, how much value a track had and something like Ou Est Le Soleil I’d forget about it [because] the problem with this one was always that it wasn’t a proper song. Really, it’s like a little piece of entertainment.
Stephen Lipson: We didn’t spend that much time on it. I had it. It was all there. We over-dubbed a few things. I think he might have played drums on it. He got Hamish [Stuart] to play guitar and we might have developed one bit. […]

Last updated on April 27, 2021