Carla Bruni is not afraid to make the necessary leaps of anti-logic that mark out the lyrical maverick. And so we find ourselves some way into the French first lady’s third album where a sparse, folky meditation called The Antelope reveals itself. “The future is unclear,” explains Bruni, “And the past is troublesome/Me I’m at one with the present/Like the panther and the elephant.” If you were casting around for a creature that was truly at one with the present tense you would probably opt for a goldfish — but let’s not get too bogged down with nitpicking.

Context is important to the way we listen to pop music. And, replete with a passable version of Bob Dylan’s You Belong to Me, Comme si de rien n’était may be the best album ever made by the wife of a head of state. Even if the only other contender in the field hadn’t been the 1989 record that Imelda Marcos made of her husband’s favourite love songs, the album would still hold its own.

The opening song La Jeunesse sets the tone for an album of low-key baroque pop, fronted by a woman who really does regrette absolutely rien whatsoever — from the public declarations of polygamy to the naked photo shoots. By way of proof lithe, Moorish rhythms skitter beneath her best vocal on Ta Tienne, in which she confirms: “I, who used to make men dance, I give my whole self to you . . . Let them curse me, let them damn me. I don’t give a stuff.”

We might be tempted to smirk at the French way of doing things, but it is hard to imagine any of our first ladies in recent history pulling off a similar feat — not least Cherie Blair, whose version of When I’m 64 on a state visit to China made everyone who heard it wish that they were a goldfish.

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