Read Charles Bremner's blog on the new album

Carla Bruni sings of her physical passion for her “Lord” Nicolas Sarkozy on a new album launched yesterday amid a lavish promotion supervised by her husband’s aides.

The first album by the model-chanteuse since her high-speed romance and marriage to the President was called a “world event” by the Élysée Palace and promoted like the work of a megastar. Mr Sarkozy is banking on “the Carla effect” to lift his approval ratings, which are at a historic low for a modern French leader.

Comme si de rien n’était (As if Nothing Had Happened) was put on the internet, for listening only, before its world release next weekend under the title Simply. In 14 songs, 11 of which she has written, Ms Bruni deploys her husky, intimate folk-blues style to celebrate the agonies of love and passage of time. While the media lavished praise on the “first lady’s” creative talent, attention focused on the more torrid lyrics. Chief among them was Ta Tienne (Yours), a clear declaration of love to the President, whom she met last November.

Ms Bruni, 40, who used to boast about her predatory power over men, sings of indifference to disapproval and her new devotion to monogamy: “You are my lord, you’re my darling, you’re my orgy . . . my charming Prince I am yours . . . I who always sought fire, am burning for you like a pagan woman.” The Turin-born millionairess delivers a warning: “Watch out because I am Italian, I am going to discourage the ladies, I will gag the beautiful sirens.” In another song, she maintains: “I am still a child, despite my 40 years, despite my 30 lovers.”

Ms Bruni, who drew a protest from Colombia last month with the lyrics of one song likening her love to cocaine, is to donate her share of the profits to a French charity.

In the first of a stream of promotional interviews, she told France-Inter radio yesterday that she had been encouraged by Cherie Blair to carry on singing while serving as première dame de France. “This is a trade like any other. It is an honest trade and I hope it won’t upset the French if I hold on to a trade,” she said.

To allow for the Sarkophobia of some fans, naïve, the record company that has produced her third album, considered but rejected the idea of putting a sticker on the album saying: “You can like Carla Bruni without liking her husband.”

In the radio interview she listed her musical influences as Bob Dylan (one of whose songs she covers), Billie Holiday, Dolly Parton, the Clash, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Ms Bruni’s past musical companions included Sir Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, with whom she had affairs in the early 1990s.

While the critics mainly treated her album with the deference due to the head of state’s consort, there were some dissenters. Le Nouvel Observateur, the leading left-wing news weekly, called it pretty but trite, uninspired and boring. Comment on the internet was largely negative, offering a taste of the backlash Ms Bruni risks. “Given the choice, I would prefer that someone pour molten steel in my ears than having to listen to this modern-day Marie-Antoinette,” said one of hundreds of vitriolic blog comments.

Marianne, a news weekly, denounced “Operation Carla” last week, comparing her to Marie-Antoinette and the excesses of the 18th-century Versailles court. “What a din of flatulent flattery,” Marianne said. “What an amazing hoo-ha around the launch of her new CD.” It acknowledged that “Carla humanises her husband. She makes him look more virile after he was abandoned by his wife.”

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