Préliminaires

Préliminaires is a 2009 album by Iggy Pop, released on June 2, 2009, and inspired by Michel Houellebecq's novel La Possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island). Unlike his previous works, the album is less rock-oriented and was said by Pop to be "quieter album with some jazz overtones" with its sound influenced by New Orleans jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Pop also admitted that the album is his response to being "sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music". The album even includes a cover of the 1940s French jazz standard "Les feuilles mortes" (Autumn Leaves), which Iggy sings in French. The song is most associated with such artists as Yves Montand and Edith Piaf. The album also includes such songs as "How Insensitive", a jazzy bossa nova standard composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim, and "Nice to Be Dead", more of a swamp rock song. The visuals for the album were created by French-Iranian graphic novelist and animated film director Marjane Satrapi. Marjane and Iggy met when she asked him to voice one of the characters in the English language version of her Academy-award nominated movie Persepolis in 2007.