Yesterday I received the following email… I remember hearing a song in France in 1996 or 1997. The video had the singer (male) walking through a market wearing a silver cowboy hat. The song contained lots of French sayings and proverbs and started with “Dans le royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois.” Could you [...]
A couple of readers got quite excited by hearing the samples from Niagara’s album Religion, and this song in particular has proved quite popular. So here are the lyrics along with the English translation. There is a brief discussion of this song in this French Pod Class PDF. I’m currently listening to a couple of [...]
I was supposed to be playing in the first round of my club’s annual tennis tournament today but as it happens my doubles partner is in Poland – something I did not find out until 15 minutes after the match was supposed to start. As a result I am sat here in the bar and [...]
I started, and indeed finished this translation back in April. I can’t remember why I choose not to publish it, perhaps I was not entirely happy with the translation, but reading it back I think it’s pretty good. Perhaps my standards are dropping. Pep’s is another band that easily makes my top ten French language [...]
For some reason I had written this album off in my mind as being far too cheesy and a bit too “eighties”. Wandering through my iTunes collection today trying to avoid work, it caught my eye and I kicked it off. Currently playing in the background, this album from 1990 is way better than I [...]
I mentioned a couple of days ago that there was a song on the album Tandoori by Eiffel that takes its name from the same place as La Ruda’s Paris En Bouteille. The French expression is Avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille. A reasonable English equivalent, as mentioned previously would be “if wishes [...]
One of the best bands (in my opinion) that I have come across while searching for great French language music is a Canadian band called Immaculate Machine. Regrettably for this site all their albums are in English, except for a half-album called Les uns mais pas les autres on which the band have taken six [...]
I’ve just bought Eiffel’s 2007 album Tandoori and will be giving it a good listening over the next day or two. I don’t own any Eiffel tracks although I have heard them pop up quite a lot on last.fm when I listen to the French channels. From the 30 second extracts I heard (below) before [...]
You know me – if I had my way I would just write blog entries about La Ruda and Mademoiselle K. But tonight I only have about an hour to write this entry so I have chosen a song which is very simple lyrically but contains some common, useful French phrases. The sort of phrases [...]
Stand up, ladies and gentlemen
I’m sure you’ll love his new song
This man is a wonderful composer
Combined to a talented singer
He sang for you Water Mint Colour
For me it’s a really great honour
Stand up ‘cos he is with us tonight
Please welcome Mr Eddy Mitchell…
That’s the opening to this song by La Ruda, the rest of which is indeed in French. I guess we know that the above verse was not penned by a native English speaker due to the oddness of the phrase “combined to a talented singer”. Even the slightly more correct “combined with” sounds a bit strange, but it’s interesting to note how little phrases of our native language get embedded within our brains to the point where only a poet or a non-native speaker would consider deviating in such a way from the expected phrase “a wonderful composer as well as a talented singer”.
Eddy Mitchell was a French actor and singer, originally called Claude Moine who took his new name, according to Wikipedia, due to his admiration for American-born French actor Eddie Constantine. The song includes several references to songs by the singer which include songs such as Johnny B Goode which he covered with French lyrics (which, out of interest started Mon ami Chuck Berry chante depuis toujours, de drôles d’aventures dans des histoires d’amour) as he did with other famous Rock ‘n’ Roll tracks such as “Riding along in my automobile” (which became À credit et en stéreeo).
