“Cor, this foreign bird's got a way with words,” you think, as Mme Bruni-Sarkozy wraps her breathily seductive tones around the line “I carry the sun in a golden cup, the moon in a silver bag” on the opening track of her first album in the English language. Released in January, No Promises has topped the European chart, and amid the clamour of Madame and Monsieur's presidential visit its 11 songs offer a potential goldmine of insights into the French First Couple.

However, once you've managed to stop looking at the aspirational front cover (Bruni kneeling with a book in a small cotton dress), a leaf through the booklet reveals that these aren't Carla's words but those of WB Yeats.

In fact, all of Carla's songs on No Promises take their lyrics from English language poets, Emily Dickinson, WH Auden and Christina Rossetti among them. So she's well-read, and pretty tasteful too — though anyone hoping for tell-all revelations about Nicolas's nocturnal habits will be frustrated. But then good French girls, or Italian-born ex-supermodels who happen to have bagged the French President, never reveal that kind of stuff anyway.

What No Promises does reveal is that Bruni has a pretty, lambent, peculiarly accented voice that occasionally recalls Brigitte Bardot's. Her own gently plucked guitar melodies are hazily effective. The vibe is not a million miles away from Madeleine Peyroux, or the Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini. Not for nothing has Bruni sold close to a million records in Europe. Only a revolting harmonica solo, springing like a paparazzo out of nowhere, troubles the calm. There is a more honourable history of models turning into singers than you might think. Grace Jones and Nico are the ones to aim for, though it's hard to picture Carla winding up a dead junkie like Nico (not impossible), or making music halfway as interesting.

In truth, No Promises has no higher ambition than being a inoffensive dinner-party soundtrack, and this it achieves with elegance and savoir-faire. But then what did you expect from the French President's wife?