L'Instant X - Backgroung and Writing

Backgroung and Writing

After the mixed success of her single "XXL" and the poor chart performances of the Anamorphosée album, Farmer decided to release a second single, "L'Instant X", for the Christmas period. The song's title comes from an expression of the first verse. The chorus covers in its own way Tino Rossi's Christmas song "Petit Papa Noël", as in the lyrics Farmer scans, in jerky syllabes, "Papa Noël, quand tu descendras du ciel...", which are also the lyrics of the chorus in Rossi's song.

For the first time throughout Farmer's career, all the remixes available on the various formats were not produced exclusively by Boutonnat's team: only two of them were made by Laurent Boutonnat and Bertrand Châtenet, while the other two, more techno and dance, were produced by Ramon Zenker. The 'Have an Instant X remix' was considered by French author Julien Rigal "probably one of the best remixes" outside Boutonnat's ones. The second track on the CD single is a jazz-oriented remixed version of "Alice", another song from the Anamorphosée album. Unlike many of Farmer's singles, there is no instrumental version on the various formats. The image uses on the cover was perhaps influenced by Ross Hunter's 1966 film Madame X.

On 21 January 2004, the song was remixed by One-T for the compilation RemixeS. Devoted to discothèques, this version was released as 7" maxi, becoming the third single single from the RemixeS album, after "Sans contrefaçon" and "Je t'aime mélancolie". It was the more broadcast single from the album.