On Saturday, September 14, on Paris's Champs-Élysées, from 8,000 to 10,000 people representing the Paris 2024 volunteers, employees and sporting event organizers are expected to take part in a final parade, at President Emmanuel Macron's request. The event will take place around the Arc de Triomphe monument, with 70,000 spectators in attendance, and more than likely a few million more watching on their TV screens. More than 180 athletes, including 82 gold, silver and bronze medalists, will also take part in the celebration.
As with the four previous ceremonies, music and artists will feature at the heart of this final act of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games celebrations. It's also the first case of "Olympic nostalgia" which, since the Olympic flame in the Jardin des Tuileries was extinguished and the final notes of Daft Punk's hit "One More Time" rang out from the speakers at the Paris region's Stade de France on the evening of Sunday, September 8, seems intent on perpetuating the emotions people had experienced over the Olympic summer.
Victor Le Masne, the composer and arranger who orchestrated the music that accompanied the Olympic events and celebrations, will once again be in charge of the soundtrack to this final day. "The idea is to celebrate what we felt, but I can't say more about the soundtrack yet. We're working on it at the moment." Some of the musicians who took part in one of the four previous ceremonies are expected to be invited back for this event, which will conclude with a concert and DJ set. For many of these artists, the Olympic Games have not only shone a spotlight on their work, they have also stirred up rare emotions.
The music recognition app Shazam reported that its records had been broken at the Olympics' various ceremonies. This started with the opening ceremony on Friday, July 26, when Cerrone's lengthy remix of "Supernature," arranged by Le Masne, had set a new world record for the most "shazamed" track in the app's history. Over the weekend, the song's stream count soared across all platforms, with a 1,200% increase on Apple Music and 900% on Deezer and Spotify. The audio version of the track – which was originally released as a 7-inch single by Cerrone, in 1977 – was viewed over a million times on the artist's YouTube channel over the same weekend.
For Cerrone's manager, Tahar Chender, who also recorded a 400% increase in the song's use on TikTok and Instagram, "this exposure highlighted the timelessness of the work and reminded us of Cerrone's stature and his catalogue's place in the history of French disco and electronic music." A reminder he intended to capitalize on in the months to come.
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