B＊Witched - C'est la vie

1998

B＊Witched - C'est la vie (1998) Director: Alison Fairweather Murray Era: Late-90s Bubblegum Pop Era (1998) - Peak of post-Spice Girls Irish/British girl-group dominance; debut single cycle for B*Witched on Epic/Glowworm Records, released 25 May 1998. Tier-1 preservation candidate: a confirmed chart-topping debut single video that set multiple UK chart records, directed by a credentialled auteur with verifiable choreographic and cinematic craft. The video encapsulates the precise aesthetic, fashion, and cultural codes of 1998 British-Irish bubblegum pop, offers rich material for dual-audience textual analysis, and documents a rare moment of Celtic folk integration into mainstream pop video. High cross-disciplinary research utility across pop history, gender studies, Irish cultural studies, and music video production studies. Context: Released on 25 May 1998 as B*Witched's debut single on Epic/Glowworm Records, 'C'est la Vie' debuted at #1 on the UK Singles Chart on 31 May 1998, making B*Witched the youngest girl group ever to achieve a UK number one. The single reached #9 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and charted #1 in Ireland and New Zealand, going platinum in Australia. It was the fifth best-selling UK single of 1998. The song, built on cheeky double entendres that operated on two audience levels simultaneously, helped define a post-Spice Girls, Celtic-inflected bubblegum pop moment. Its Irish cultural markers, daisied countryside, Irish reel sequence, folk-inflected production, distinguished B*Witched within the crowded late-90s girl group landscape. The video was nominated for 'Best Song Musically and Lyrically' at the 1999 Ivor Novello Awards. Director notes: The music video was filmed in April 1998 and credited on the Betacam SP release (Discogs) as directed by Alison Murray, produced by Nikki Parot and Paul Evans, production company UFO. Murray also directed B*Witched's follow-up UK video for 'Rollercoaster' (1998). The narrative follows the four group members in a lush outdoor field of daisies playfully teasing a teenage boy in a treehouse, tying him to a tree, hosing him with water, and performing an Irish reel, before returning to their opening positions in the field. The video's choreographic energy and dance-led blocking are consistent with Murray's background in dance and choreography, a hallmark noted across her broader filmography.