France's first lady also first in record sales

New albums of France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy are displayed on its official launch in a store in Paris July 11, 2008.

PARIS (Reuters) - France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, shot to the top of the pop charts with her latest album in its first full week on sale, a music industry body reported.

The album has generated massive interest because it is the first by the Italian-born former model turned pop star since her whirlwind romance with President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom she married in February less than three months after they met.

The new record, entitled "Comme si de rien n'etait" (As if nothing had happened) and released under the first lady's maiden name, Carla Bruni, hit the shelves on July 11 in a blaze of publicity.

The SNEP, an industry group that tracks record sales, said on Wednesday that in the week starting July 13 the album knocked "Viva la Vida," the latest offering from British band Coldplay, off the top spot in the charts.

The SNEP did not, however, specify how many copies of the album had been sold.

Bruni-Sarkozy has said she wrote the lyrics of the new songs partly before she met Sarkozy and partly since they fell in love. This has prompted intense scrutiny of the lyrics by French media obsessed with the presidential love life.

"You are my drug, more lethal than heroin from Afghanistan and more dangerous than Colombian cocaine," she sings in one of the songs that caused a minor diplomatic incident between France and Colombia.

In another song, she seems to dismiss criticism from some of her left-wing friends who were bewildered by her romance with the right-leaning Sarkozy.

"It's not correct, but it's good nonetheless. Let them curse me and I don't give a damn. I couldn't care less, I take all the blame, you need to know, you need to understand, you are my lord, you are my love, you are my orgy," she sings.

Reuters/Nielsen