Françoise Hardy - Tous les garçons et les filles
Even in my native Denmark we were played this song in French in high school in the late seventies. It seems it's been used by French teachers all over the world. Good choice.
My only problem was mustering sufficient suspension of disbelief to be able to believe that somebody looking like her could not find anybody to hold her hand and look in her eyes.
I remember my class mates laughed when I asked our teacher how old Françoise was. Heck, it was purely intellectual interest, I swear!
... I am just realizing that this is one of the songs I heard once over thirty years ago, and which I am still singing occasionally. Admittedly some of the French lyrics went a bit haywire.
Wow, thanks for that. Never heard of her. I did get to a fluent level in French, but it was "old style" and I shudder to imagine Madame Feraud ("ferocious") sinking so low as to use anything popular or modern.
ReplyDeleteThose scenes of Paris in the 60s give me nostalgia. I don't know why, I've never lived in Paris and I certainly wasn't there in the 1960s, but it just seems, with all that black-and-white and the girls wearing skirts and square little heels, like something has been lost. The trucks and cars in the background, the men in suits AND HATS, the women with their cat-eye glasses. Of course, Algeria was crumbling and terrorism of the modern sort was being invented there at the time, so I guess it wasn't all roses.
She is a decent performer. I love that style of song, though generally only in foreign languages. Here in New Orleans we have a lot of "Cajun" bands -- we call it "chank-a-chank" if it is strictly formulaic I-IV-V-I style plain rockabilly blues pop dance music, but with Acadian instrumentation and lyrics. "Jolie Blonde" is one of the standardest of standards, a song everyone with a guitar is supposed to know, and you can sure fake it quick and easy, and it's great fun to dance to. But only if they sing it in (Cajun) French, and garble it, so I don't have to hear the maudlin, obvious, cliche'd doggerel.
I have wanted to perform like Mademoiselle Hardy songs of that sort ... a little studio pumping of my voice, a little schmaltz, a lot of homage to Madame Piaf. "Non ... rien de rien ... non ... je ne regrette RIEN ..." Wow.
I studied German in High School. We did "Neun-neunzig Luftballons."
INCROYABLE ...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ8Zxo37RpQ
And that's "Neun-UND-neunzig ..."
In the cool light of day, I must now be more rational and say ...
ReplyDeleteMAGNIFIQUE!!!! :)
never heard of her. not much of an influence for me to even bother.
ReplyDeletesarah said: "never heard of her. not much of an influence for me to even bother."
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting us know.
I think Mick Jagger once described her as "the perfect woman".
ReplyDeleteI am still simply stunned. Delighted. Her capacity to deliver language cleanly, beautifully, is remarkable. Many of the songs I've found are cheap pop and, at first blush, seemingly meaningless fluff. But the adept performance betrays a hidden depth I'm impressed with. Her clarity of tone and her ability to hit "the pure note," especially with some of the more difficult melodies, really catches your attention. There's something RIVETING about her, which so many performers simply don't have. It doesn't HURT that she's tall and thin and rather beautiful (and all her flaws are generally well hidden by the image industry -- thick thighs relative to her arms and chest, square masculine jaw, smallish eyes, bony gnarled hands, HEEE-YUGE feet! -- and I list them so I won't die dissatisfied). But she has something well beyond that. She is like Madonna in that she wants to be looked at (and heard), and is good at putting herself out there, but does not convey a desperate neediness to "please" (cf. Judy Garland, esp. late in her career). It's a textbook study of "charisma" on screen.
ReplyDeleteAdd to that the nostalgie I feel for the great age of French intellectualism (the late 1950s to mid-1960s), the admiration I have for all chanteuses whether from the teens through to the 90s, and the fact that I'm interested in performing exactly this type of verbally focused music -- in which the background changes and the instrumentation serve to deliver the words, and the paroles (lyrics) drive the artistic thought rather than vice versa -- and I'm hooked man.
Here's a point where she really shows her abilities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ8Zxo37RpQ
At the time indices :29, :42, 1:09, 1:18. At each of these, a rather difficult key or pitch change leads her to ... absolutely nothing. Like a small child hitting the piano key, the right note comes out and the musical idea propagates itelf into the air like "des ronds en l'eau" about which she is singing. Remarkable.
Of course, I find the schamltzy arrangements rather dated, and indicative of the music industry's interest in milking this genius for all she's worth. Her trajectory to eventually balanced happy life, and continual artistic output, suggests to me that her French education served her in good stead under these sorts of pressures. An American victimized by the same system would either go all eccentric and freaky about sex (Madonna) or just get drunk and drive around and hit innocent bystanders in a display of "acting out" petulance (Lohan). Or just die of an overdose (many others we don't remember because they're dead).
"At each of these, a rather difficult key or pitch change leads her to ... absolutely nothing."
ReplyDeleteIt would normally lead to what?
(I have no education in music.)
Europe does not have the extremes of celebrity worship (and -attacks) that the US has. In Denmark the crown prince goes to cafes and clubs like normal people.
ReplyDeleteEolake, what I meant about the difficult points in the music is, that she just magically slides right through them as though they're not difficult. My comment, "a rather difficult key or pitch change leads her to ... absolutely nothing," was meant to indicate her breathtaking facility with her voice. Few people can do it so easily, and she makes it seem SO easy that you probably don't even notice.
ReplyDeleteFor example, here's the clip you initially posted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4sL3wsYSY&mode=related&search=
The lyrics begin with these lines:
"tous les garcons et les filles de mon age / se promenent dans la rue DEUX par deux."
Listen to that clip for the moment which happens right between time indices :18 and :19. At this moment she's singing the following lyrics:
"tous les garcons et les filles de mon age / savent bien ce que c'est D'ETRE hereux."
This second pair of lines is quite similar to the first pair, but the melody is ever so slightly different. The second time around, the note which falls at the place of the first syllable of "d'etre" is higher than in the same place in the rhythm the first time 'round (on the first "deux"). (It goes up from SO to LA, if that helps you; and she's in A major in that clip.)
The way she just gets up to that higher note, basically moves on, and you never notice?
Only about two hundred people on the planet at any given time can do it with such facility. Hit the note, not care that it's different, not indicate AT ALL to the audience (aurally) that anything different has been done, stay exactly in key, relax and sound like you haven't done anything hard at all, smile and carry on.
Now you go do it in the shower. :)
Yes, I get your point. Trained musicians have told me I'm a very good singer, but I can't sing that. Not without indicating it like you say.
ReplyDeleteGlad you get it. Nice to know you're online reading these mad fanaticisms of mine ...
ReplyDelete"It goes up from SO to LA"
ReplyDeleteSay, Final... you wouldn't happen, perchance, to have absolute pitch?
I'm eagerly waiting for the new PlayStation musical game: Final Identity XIV: the mad fanaticisms. They say it tops anything previously done in wild imagination. ;-)