Les Horribles Cernettes (French pronunciation: [le.z‿ɔʁiblə sɛʁnɛt], "The Horrible CERN Girls") was an all-female parody pop group, self-labelled "the one and only High Energy Rock Band", founded by employees of CERN which performed at CERN and other HEP-related events. Their musical style is often described as doo-wop. The initials of their name, LHC, are the same as those of the Large Hadron Collider which was later built at CERN. Their humorous songs are freely available on their website.
The band is also known for a photograph of themselves that became the first-ever photographic image posted on the web.
Les Horribles Cernettes was founded in 1990 by Michele de Gennaro, a graphic designer at CERN, whose romantic relationship with a physicist was made difficult by his numerous shifts. She attracted attention by stepping on stage during the CERN Hardronic Festival, singing "Collider", a melancholy song about the lonely nights endured by the girlfriend of a high energy physicist (excerpt):
I gave you a golden ring to show you my love
You went to stick it in a printed circuit
To fix a voltage leak in your collector
You plug my feelings into your detector
You never spend your nights with me
You don't go out with other girls either
You only love your collider
Your collider.
The group was subsequently formed with the help of Silvano de Gennaro, an analyst in the Computer Science department at CERN, who wrote additional songs. The fame of Les Horribles Cernettes grew and they were invited to international Physics conferences and The World'92 Expo in Seville, as well as celebrations such as Georges Charpak's Nobel Prize party. They received press coverage from numerous newspapers, including The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, La Tribune de Genève, and the CERN Courier. The band's lineup has changed over time, but they were performing under the same name until 21 July 2012, when the band had its final performance, which was at CERN's Hardronic Festival in Switzerland.
Les Cernettes were the subject of the first photo on the Web: