{"id":876,"date":"2021-05-25T01:20:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T00:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/?p=876"},"modified":"2026-03-05T06:39:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T05:39:38","slug":"morning-songbrelne-me-quitte-pas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roglacup.com\/klaus62\/2021\/05\/25\/morning-songbrelne-me-quitte-pas\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning song#Brel#Ne me quitte pas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

or a song written about a very particular set of circumstances, Jacques Brel\u2019s \u201cNe me quitte pas\u201d has proved to have universal power. There\u2019s not just an English translation for this song. You can be heartbroken in Hebrew, Afrikaans, Arabic<\/a>, Finnish,West Frisian<\/a>and most languages in between. For who, at some point in their life, has not been so inconsolably, desolately, unbearably heartbroken that they are willing to lose all dignity and echo Brel\u2019s plea: \u201cDon\u2019t leave me\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brel recorded \u201cNe me quitte pas\u201d on September 11 1959, for his fourth album La Valse \u00e0 Mille Temps<\/em>, and drew from his own misery for what he called \u201ca hymn to the cowardice of men\u201d. It had been written after the singer and actress Zizou ended their relationship. Her reason? She had become pregnant, and Brel \u2014 already a married father \u2014 refused to acknowledge the child, leading her to have an abortion. At which point Brel wrote his song, ostensibly ridiculing men for their willingness to debase themselves before women, though it\u2019s hard not to read the lyrics and view the narrator as the victim: no mention of unacknowledged children or abortions here, just doomed passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song transcended its origins, though: Brel\u2019s melody was for the ages, and there is a delicious contrast between the sombre verses and the choruses, where the music swirls into life like leaves caught on an autumn breeze, in a melody borrowed from Liszt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simone Langlois recorded the first cover version, also in 1959 (the chronology is unclear, but some believe her version predated Brel\u2019s release). French-language covers were commonplace through the 1960s, not always by French singers. Nina Simone sang it in 1965, her voice grand and disappointed, wintry in its distress. There\u2019s no need to understand French to appreciate what Simone is singing of: her despair is an unending deep, an ocean trench of sadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brel\u2019s particular sensibility \u2014 dissolute, faintly nihilistic, wholly embracing of altered states and contemptuous of bourgeois sensibilities \u2014 was very much in tune with that of the rock scene of the late 1960s, even if his music had nothing in common with most of the bands of that era. Two different songwriters in the United States, Rod McKuen and Mort Shuman, set about translating his work. The versions by Shuman, a rock\u2019n\u2019roll-era songwriter who brought Brel\u2019s work to the New York stage in the revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris<\/em>, are regarded as better translations, but it was McKuen who redefined \u201cNe me quitte pas\u201d as \u201cIf You Go Away\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McKuen released his version<\/a> of the song in 1966, with its now familiar lyrical structure contrasting what happens if she goes away with if she stays (\u201cI\u2019ll make you a day \/ Like no day had been \/ Or will be again\u201d). It crossed immediately into the mainstream. Shirley Bassey<\/a> tackled it in 1967 (cheekily introduced on TV by McKuen as \u201ca song I wrote\u201d), stretching the syllables at the end of each verse disconcertingly. Sandie Shaw, meanwhile, clung to the French lyrics. Dusty Springfield split the difference, and recorded a wonderful bilingual version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frank Sinatra, entering a difficult phase of his career and sometimes seeming like the granddad who was slightly baffled by this newfangled kids\u2019 music, took on the song for his 1969 album My Way<\/em>, and it suited him perfectly \u2014 at the very bottom of his range, a slight wavering around some of the notes emphasising his vulnerability. From the sublime to the ridiculous: it was followed on the album by a jaw-droppingly terrible, point-missing version of \u201cMrs Robinson\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott Walker, meanwhile, was using Brel to ease his passage from heart-throb to a walking, talking existential crisis, and his first three solo records were littered with enough Brel songs that they would later be compiled in their own right on an album (Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel<\/em>). His \u201cIf You Go Away\u201d was lush and opulent, but given context by the other covers. \u201cIf You Go Away\u201d, on its own, was a sad love song; placed alongside \u201cNext\u201d and \u201cThe Girls and the Dogs\u201d and \u201cAmsterdam\u201d<\/a>, it gains meaning as just one part of a dissolute life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The versions never stopped coming. Young artists will continue to hear Scott Walker or Nina Simone and want to add to that legacy. And so Lauryn Hill recorded \u201cNe me quitte pas\u201d on a tribute album to Simone; Marc Almond, like Walker, took to exploring the Brel songbook early \u2014 his first stab at \u201cIf You Go Away\u201d, a dramatic and brittle piano version, was recorded in 1982, with Almond gloriously overwrought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could spend days listening to all the versions of \u201cNe me quitte pas\u201d, from obscure foreign-language recordings through to Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNe me quitte pas\u201d? This is a song that will never go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posted from:https:\/\/ig.ft.com\/life-of-a-song\/ne-me-quitte-pas.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ne Me Quitte Pas. These words echoed throughout my childhood, before I understood the depth of the artist who uttered them and what they would come to mean to me at different stages of life. I heard them first with my little 3 year old ears, keenly interested in music. I loved the piano riffs, the repetitiveness, and the simplicity of the chords that accompanied the lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posted from: https:\/\/www.womanlymag.com\/black-maternal-health\/ne-me-quitte-pas<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n