Mickey 3d

Mickey 3d emerged as an award-winning French alternative rock outfit whose Virgin-backed debut arrived in 2000, after which the group steadily built a wider audience throughout the ensuing ten years. The trio took shape in 1996 in Saint-Étienne, Rhône-Alpes, with Mickaël Furnon handling vocals, songwriting and guitar, Aurélien Joanin on drums, and Najah el Mahmoud on keyboards. A handful of self-released cassettes circulated in the late 1990s—Le Souffle Court (1996), Mickey 3d (1997) and L’Amour (1998)—before Premier Disque, an independent imprint, offered the band its first contract and issued the album Mistigri Torture in 1999. That record largely recycled material from the earlier home-recorded tapes while adding a few freshly tracked studio cuts; Virgin Music France subsequently licensed it for a major-label edition in 2000, placed the group under contract, and promoted the track “La France a Peur” as a single. Each subsequent Virgin release outperformed the last: La Trêve (2001), the second album, introduced Mickey 3d to the French albums chart and yielded several singles; Tu Vas Pas Mourir de Rire (2003), the third, climbed into the Top 20 and delivered the band’s breakthrough hit, the Top 20 single “Respire”; the concert set Live à Saint-Étienne (2004) matched that chart standing and featured the Top 40 success “Johnny Rep”; and the fourth studio album, Matador (2005), peaked at number three while generating multiple singles, among them the Top 40 title track. Critical recognition accompanied the commercial climb, most notably a Prix Constantin in 2003 and three Victoires de la Musique honors in 2004—Rock Album of the Year, Original Song of the Year and Music Video of the Year. The sixth album, La Grande Évasion, surfaced in 2009 and included the single “Méfie-toi L’Escargot”.