Le mot de passe

Background and writing

This album was released on May 14, 1999. As for Je te dis vous and Dans ma chair, it was composed and produced by many famous artists in France. For example, it was produced by the French singer and songwriter Pascal Obispo, on which Kaas was accompanied by an orchestra on several tracks. Jean-Jacques Goldman again contributed to the making of the studio album, among others writing two songs : "Une Fille de l'Est" (Eng: "A Girl from the East") in which Kaas praised her East French heritage and "Quand les chansons commencent" (Goldman had already worked with Kaas for her two previous studio albums). The French singer Zazie wrote the track "Je compte jusqu'a toi" (she had also participated in the writing of "Je compte jusqu'à toi", on Dans ma chair). Lionel Florence, who had composed many songs for many artists such as Nolwenn Leroy, was involved in the writing of three tracks. Yvan Cassar, Abraham Laboriel Jr. and Jean-Philippe Audin, who participated in Mylène Farmer's albums and concerts tours, were parts of musicians.

The song "Les Éternelles" (Eng: "The Eternals") was also published in Germany as a duet with the Swiss tenor Erkan Aki under the title of "Unter der Haut" (Eng: "Under the skin"), and was the theme music of the five-part ZDF serial Sturmzeit (Eng: Stormy Times), based on a book by Charlotte Link.

In France, the two singles from this album didn't meet a great success. The first one, "Ma Liberté contre la tienne", peaked only at #34, while the second one, "Une Femme comme une autre", failed to reach the top 50 (#78). Two other songs from Le mot de passe were released as singles in 2000 ("Mon Chercheur d'or" and "Les Chansons commencent"), but in their live versions available on Kaas' 2000 album Live. They weren't successful too.

Chart performance

Even if this album was successful, it didn't hit the same sales and chartings as Kaas' two previous studio albums. In France, it reached #2 on May 22, 1999, and stayed there for three consecutive weeks. After that, it almost kept on dropping, falling off the top ten after just six weeks. However, it managed to stabilize in the lower positions and totaled 27 weeks in the top 50 and 36 weeks in the top 100. It achieved Platinum status and was the 26th best-selling album of 1999.

In Belgium (Wallonia), the album had a great success : it debuted at #14 on May 29, then jumped to #7, finally hit #2 and remained at this position for three consecutive weeks. It dropped slowly and featured in the top ten for nine weeks, 18 weeks in the top 20 and 26 weeks in the top 40.

The album was charted for 15 weeks in Switzerland (top 50), eight of them in the top 30, with a peak at #14 in its second week, on June 6, 1999. The album was certified Gold disc the same year.

Le mot de passe met a moderate success in Germany, where it peaked at #27, and Finland, where it hit #26 and stayed on the chart for four weeks.