Discover Top Posts Tagged with #sandrine

Paul Almasy, Sandrine, Café de Flore, Paris, 1958

#paul almasy #Sandrine #Café de Flore #Paris #1958

For two decades, fans have been waking up on Christmas morning to custom, obsession-feeding gifts from strangers.

For my second fan culture column for Atlas Obscura, I wrote about Yuletide! (The first was on 18th-century sentiment albums as proto-Tumblrs.) This piece features several longtime Yuletide participants, including Dr. Anna Wilson, who wrote this great TWC article (partly) about Yuletide, and fic writers Sandrine and Petronia:

“What I really love about Yuletide is the potential for kismet,” says Petronia, “the story that, as a recipient, I always wished existed, [and] turns out to be the story someone else always wanted to write. The idea that I always had percolating as a writer, that was too niche to put energy into, turns out to have an audience after all—even an audience of one, which is all I need.” Sandrine echoes that love of serendipitous connections. “It’s great when there’s an obscure fandom of your heart which you thought was something only you cared for, and then someone else offers it—or requests it!—and you realize it wasn’t actually a fandom of one after all.”

(Also a note: I'm aware of the irony of a fandom juggernaut being the lead image for a piece on a rare-fandom exchange. 😭 While I did not choose the image myself, I do mention it in the piece—The Untamed was a Yuletide fandom its first year!)

#fanfiction #yuletide #anna wilson #sandrine #petronia #fic exchanges #gift economy #atlas obscura #my writing

Sandrine

#sandrine #black leather gloves #leather gloves #gloves #red dress #fur #fur wrap #curls #elegant #fashion

Eurovision 2008 - Number 1 - Sandrine - "I Feel the Same Way"

Belgium Count 2008: 11

Well. Here we are. One of the two songs that gave me the reason to start writing about national finals and Eurovision. When I first heard I Feel the Same Way, I couldn't believe it hadn't won. Then I realised what it lost too and then just how strong this entire national final was, and I wondered what the hell happened in Belgium in 2008. It's only after writing about every national final and Eurovision from 1992 onwards that I began to realise just how normal this was.

Especially for Belgium.

Sandrine Van Handenhouven was one of the crop of singers from Idool 2004. She may only have come third there, but Sony, the record company who were offering the contract to the winner, liked her so much they gave her a record contract too. Some singles and an album followed in 2005, and those singles charted but didn't get the acclaim or sales that neither Sandrine nor her backers expected.

In 2007 she moved to a new label and management, The Entertainment Group and as part of this new push, she entered Eurosong. There was a sense of excitement around Sandrine's prospects within the business to the extent that for this entry they recruited some big names to write the song.

It's by Felix Howard, Peter John Vettese and Michelle Lawson. The latter had won award for her vocals in the UK, while Peter had been a member of Jethro Tull in the 1980s and had written songs for an astonish variety of people from the BeeGees to Idina Menzel to M People to Mel C. Felix Howard's back catalogue was even more starry. He worked extensively with Amy Winehouse on several tracks with writing, production and backing vocal(!) credits. He also wrote several songs for Sugababes including Stronger as well as working with Sia.

This was a power line-up and the song they came up with was a triumph. Awash with Wall of Sound production techniques, it brought all the pomp and brass and drive of a sixties pop symphony. Back in the day, this style of production was called the Wagnerian approach to rock and roll. You can feel that all-encompassing swell carry you off as Sandrine and her team of worshipful dancers strut their way through their three minutes of classic pop.

It truly is a full-on, glorious sixties throwback. This sort of song and production is not something that features much at Eurovision. It's not a girl-bop, it's not rock, it's not a ballad, it's not going to fit into any of the conventional boxes. It's its own thing and Sandrine has the power and glam to pull this off without breaking sweat. Her voice is strong and stable enough to match the massed horns of the instrumental and by the end she's using them as a launchpad to take off into her own orbit.

It really is a song that Eurovision desperately needs and has never had.

Sandrine won her heat, beating three other songs that have already made my top sixty-four for 2008. A Butterfly Mind, Elisa, and Paranoiacs. It was in the semi-final that the likely outcome became apparent. Although she advanced safely, she did so in second place behind the eventual winner.

The final of Eurosong 2008 got a fifty percent audience share on Belgian TV. It was big. Sandrine came second and the eventual winner crashed out of the Eurovision semi-final in seventeenth place, behind Dustin the Turkey. It's a fate I can't imagine would have happened if Sandrine had won. Her consolation prize was being Belgium's spokesperson for the scoring in the final - after the country had been eliminated.

Nevertheless, the song was a huge hit. It stayed in the Ultrapop chart for sixteen weeks hitting a peak of number two. An album followed later in the year as well as more singles. Sandrine decided to make a move to TV and became a presenter on Eén aka VRT 1. As well as making more music and presenting more TV on and off, she's also acted, and eventually she did make it to the Eurovision.

In Liverpool in 2023, Gustaph invited Sandrine to be one of his three backing singers for Because of You. In a time of recorded backing vocals, he made sure his backing vocalists were not only live but right there on stage as part of the performance with him.

Sandrine is a singer who I think the entirety of the Belgian music industry respects and they probably think that she hasn't had her due rewards over the years. She's still got it, and maybe one day she'll get to put right what happened in 2008 properly. VRT - maybe for 2027?

For now, here she is singing Let Me Fall as part of the VRT charity show Der Warmste Week in late 2024.