Will first lady’s album be music to French ears?

Bruni, from a wealthy Turin family of industrialists and musicians, made her name as a guitar-strumming singer in 2002 with her hit first album, "Quelqu'un m'a dit" (Someone Told Me). Featuring folksy tunes and Bruni's cracked, softly sexy voice, the album was a hit, selling 2 million copies. A second album "No Promises" was not.

One of the 14 songs on her new album, "Ma came" (My Drug), has already received one bad review — from Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo who took offense at the lyrics: "You are my drug/More deadly than Afghan heroin/More dangerous than white Colombian."

"Coming from the mouth of the wife of the President of France, this type of statement is very painful for Colombia," Araujo said last month after the French newspaper Le Figaro leaked the text. Colombia produces more than 80 percent of the world's cocaine.

Bruni wrote and composed most of the songs on the album, which also features a cover in English of Bob Dylan's "You Belong to Me" and an Italian song.

In a concession to her official status, she will not give concerts and royalties will go the Foundation of France, which funds charities, said Rebecca Hayat of Bruni's record label, Naive.

Will listeners get a musical peek into Bruni's love affair with Sarkozy, whom she met at a dinner party? Alas, not really.

She did say in a lengthy interview with the daily Liberation that one song "L'Amoureuse" (Woman In Love) was "developed" if not written after meeting the president. She cites one passage in particular: "The streets are gardens/I dance on the sidewalks."

After a rocky start featuring a widely criticized premarital vacation in Jordan and Egypt with an armada of paparazzi in tow, the couple married at a private ceremony and gained acceptance.

The new first lady's curtsy before Queen Elizabeth II, on Sarkozy's first state visit to Britain in March, won hearts and sealed the deal. Bruni even upstaged her own nude photos dating from her modeling days — which British tabloids splashed across their pages.

"Carla-mania" took over Israel on a June trip there. And the main Palestinian daily, Al-Quds, devoted its top left hand photograph, normally devoted to scenes of Palestinian suffering, to the French first lady.

"She's a really smart, capable woman and I can see why you married her," President Bush told Sarkozy during his June 14 visit to France.

The French press, the serious and the less so, has had a field day.

"She is good for sales, but the story was good for sales from the start," said Pringle, Point de Vue's top editor. "The fact that the president was in love again, in love with Carla Bruni, pow! It went crazy."

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