Maybe you know her name. I didn't when I first played songs from this album several times on the radio last year, until a listener emailed to ask, you do know who she is, don't you? Carla Bruni is probably the most famous model in France, the former companion of famous people such as Eric Clapton and Donald Trump.
Confounded by this news, I listened again, wondering whether I would find the album's charm diminished. If I had been sent a record by Liz Hurley or Kate Moss, would I even have listened? I doubt it. On the contrary, however, I found Carla's songs all the more remarkable and engaging now that I knew her background.
With hindsight, the clue was there all along in track eight, in which Carla admits to be being the prettiest girl on the block: 'Regardez-moi. Je suis le plus beau du quartier.' It's not the kind of confession we would have heard from Janis Ian or even Joni Mitchell. And the cover does not exactly hide Carla's light under a bushel, picturing her lying on her side, gazing soulfully at us over the neck of her guitar.
But what matters is, are the songs any good? And yes they are. The idiom is somewhere between singer-songwriter and a dinner-jazz version of Django Reinhardt: a guitar equivalent of Norah Jones, sung in French. 'Le plus beau du quartier' has the lilt of the Lovin' Spoonful's 'Daydream'. If that description makes you run a mile, well - so long, it's been good to know you. For the rest of us, the album is never worse than pleasant, and several times it moves up a gear and then becomes completely captivating.
For some, the idea of listening to songs in another language is akin to watching a ball game in which the ball is invisible: meaningless and frustrating. For me, it works the other way round. Freed from following the words, I am ready to be lured by the sound of the singer's voice, alert to the interplay between voice and instruments.
But even when we don't understand the exact meaning of the words or even the general theme of a song, there's still a sense of being carried along by the singer's conviction. An Italian whose French sounds impeccable, Carla Bruni sings softly, thoughtfully, enjoying the game of finding words that have opposite or ambiguous meanings, and resolving unusual rhymes. The standout song is 'Le toi du moi', a tour de force in which she matches more than 50 pairs of words, one for you, one for me, rhyming the second and fourth word each time. Bob Dylan or Ian Dury would have smacked their lips in satisfaction had they written it.
I've been living with this album on and off for almost a year now, during which time it has sold nearly two million copies in France and spread into Italy and Spain. Far from wearing out its charm, it has stealthily slipped into my blood, and will do the same to anyone else prepared to yield and surrender to its delicate beauty.