"California" is a 1995 song recorded by the French artist Mylène Farmer. It was the third single from her fourth studio album, Anamorphosée, and was released on 26 March 1996. The song marked the only collaboration with American movie screenwriter and director Abel Ferrara, who directed the very expensive music video in which Farmer appears both as a bourgeois woman and a prostitute. A tribute to California, the song is generally deemed as one of Farmer's signature songs and has been performed during most of the singer's tours. It has met with relative success in France and Belgium, and became one of her hits in Russia.

Farmer wanted to release "California", one of the most daring songs of the album, via the marketing for Anamorphosée. However, it was released many months after, as the third single, but was widely aired on radio. Many fans regard this song as one of the most emblematic of Farmer.

Among the different media for this single, there was a CD single distributed in a limited triptych digipack edition, and a CD maxi which contains six tracks - this one is the only CD maxi in Farmer's career still for sale because, seeing the number of tracks, it is referenced by Universal as a "mini-album" and is re-edited. "California" was also released in Germany with a new white cover. The various remixes are the result of collaboration between Laurent Boutonnat / Bertrand Châtenet ('LAPD remix' and 'wandering club mix'), and various American DJs: Niki Gasolino & Peter Parker, Nils Ruzicka, and Ramon Zenker. Two versions of the promotional CD were sent to radio stations on 29 February 1996; one of them, the luxurious edition, shows the outline of Farmer, which must be lifted to take out the CD. The designer Henry Neu said he was particularly proud of having created it.

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