Saint-Valentin by Orelsan (2007)

Before Orelsan was the most awarded rapper in France he was a kid from Caen putting tracks online, and Saint-Valentin was one of the ones that built his audience: a sour, deliberately provocative answer to Valentine's sentimentality in which the chorus is nothing but the demand. It was never put on an album. It did not need to be; it travelled on MySpace and YouTube in 2007 the way songs did then, faster than anyone's parents could install a filter.

In 2009, when Perdu d'avance went double Platinum, feminist associations cited this track alongside Sale pute in the controversy over his lyrics; it also contains the line about Marie Trintignant that followed him for years. Orelsan has since stopped performing it. On 14 February 2026, at the Zénith in Nantes, he told a crowd requesting it that there were eight-year-olds in the room.

Its afterlife is the refusal. The song is still requested at concerts, still searched for every February, and still the clearest record of the register Orelsan left behind on his way to the mainstream. It is on this list because the hook qualifies without argument; the controversy is stated here because the page would be dishonest without it.