I hear this song quite a lot on TV5 Monde on the show Paroles de Clip, and last night I caught Abd Al Malik being interviewed on Acoustic on which he performed four tracks including this one which was enough to turn me into quite a fan.

The song talks of the struggles of life and things that have value and significance, or as the title suggests, carry some weight. “Du Lourd” is a familar way of saying something is serious, heavy, weighty, morally or socially significant, etc… I’m not 100% happy with “That carries a lot of weight”, but that’s what I’ve gone with. Please do send me your ideas if you have a better way of translating it!

You’d be forgiven for thinking I was on some sort of mission if you remember the lyrics to the previous blog entry, but it is just a coincidence. I noticed this as I was working on the lyric et puis t’as tous les autres qui se lèvent comme ça, tard dans la journée, qui se grattent les bourses, je parle des deux – and I realised we were once again talking about rich people getting up late.

Wonderfully, I came across this on the web – an official TV5 Monde guide to the song, in French, with help with vocabulary and interpretation…

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Grand Soir is the latest album from La Ruda who, with this release are now without doubt my favourite French band. The variety produced by these guys from one album to the next is remarkable, from the ska of Passager du réel to the hard rock of 24 images/seconde, each album has its very own flavour and style and manages at the same time to be packed with great songs. Grand Soir is a corker – the combination of great brass riffs with clean 2-tone/ska-rhythmed guitar sounds is wonderful.

It was very hard to choose a track to translate so I’ve chosen the first one I found a reasonable YouTube link for, Quand le réveil sonne – “When the alarm rings”. Apart from Dans le même rue, this is possibly the most understated of all the tracks – there are others such as Eddie Voit Rouge, La Parade de Gordon Banks and Padam Elvis which get under your skin immediately and do something to your bones.

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