Some French Music

By Cameron Rusin

Hi friends!

It's been a while... but also I'm not sure if I have much to talk about despite the long break between posts... We're almost to outdoor track, and even closer to spring break, but as always computer science is low key killing me...

But more importantly I have a midterm for my French Popular Music class this Wednesday and I have to be able to identify 21 songs, so instead of actually studying for that (although studying is what gave me this idea) I'm going to share some of these songs with you!

"Si J'avais un Marteau" by Claude Francois, 1963
This song is so obnoxious, but so catchy and so happy. It's early ye-ye music, which means it was kind of rock but society-approved rock for youths to listen to and all be friends. Weirdly enough, it's "If I Had a Hammer", but I'm not sure the French got the political meanings behind that...


"Heureux" by Jacques Brel, 1954
This is chanson, which literally means song in French. French people worship this stuff! It was their fine art form that got taken over by American rock.

"Je Veux" by Zaz, 2011
My personal favorite, a modern take on chanson. I like this for so many reason, besides the fact that it's a good song. Way back when chanson was completely dominated by three stiff men and valued the singer over everything else but this takes the quality lyrics and music from chanson and adds a talented woman along with fun singer/band collaboration.

"Bonnie and Clyde" by Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot, 1968
What a weird song. What even is that sound effect that sounds like someone is dying that never leaves??? I kinda like the weird western feel of this song but also Gainsbourg was a very creepy man who produced for basically every young girl pop star in France in the 60s.

"Rest" by Charlotte Gainsbourg, 2017
This is a real sad song, but a cool video. Charlotte is Serge Gainsbourg's daughter with one of the pop stars he produced for. Charlotte rode out childhood fame into a real career which is pretty cool.

"Deadly Valentine" by Charlotte Gainsbourg, 2017
I couldn't just choose one of Charlotte's songs, so here's number two. I think the video is really cute!


So yeah! I left out a lot of the super mainstream 60's ye-ye and rock because I don't find much of it worth listening to, but I guess it was pretty historically important.

Oh and I almost forgot! I had to do a project on any French song of my choosing, and this was my song:
"La Vie Dure" by Francois and the Atlas Mountains, 2013
I really like this song and this entire album (that might be my final project) but I wish I understood French because I feel like this song says some cool things. The translations I've found so far give me kind of a Pretty. Odd. by Panic! at The Disco vibe, which basically means everything doesn't make much sense on a surface level which makes things hard for this non-francophone...

So yeah! I really enjoy sharing music and may do this more often. I hope you guys enjoy as well :) back to studying... (this took longer than I should've allowed...)

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 7, 2018 at 7:56 PM

    I loved this post!! Admittedly, listened to vids while packing so did not watch them...but this was so fun I love learning about what people are learning about! Thank you for sharing, I hope the test went well

    ReplyDelete

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