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Tag Archives: jacques brel

Tout ce que tu veux voir (All You Want to See) Posted by on Nov 6, 2012

Vesoul, a little French town in eastern France, is also the title of a 1968 song by the prominent singer Jacques Brel, in which he delivers a super fast-paced valse (waltz.) Also in “Vesoul“, Brel famously screamed his “Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!” (“Heat up, Marcel, heat up!“): Marcel is in fact Brel’s accordionist, Marcel Azzola, who…

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Jacques Brel: “Quand on a que l’amour” (When We Have Nothing But Love) Posted by on Feb 9, 2012

This French song never gets old. It got all the reasons to be “newsworthy” today. Like being madly full of hope, in face of all the other reasons that make you feel like baisser les bras (giving up)… There will always going to be songs like these, in the words of people, in the songs…

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Who’s the Best – Brel or Bowie? Posted by on Aug 24, 2011

Maybe this will sound like somewhat of a rhetorical question to some of you, but laquelle des deux versions préférez-vous (which one of the two versions do you prefer): The Jacques Brel or the David Bowie version? Of course, Jacques Brel is far from being un étranger (a stranger) to The French Blog! (See for example the still “hot topic”…

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CROIS-tu pouvoir conjuguer ce verbe? (Do You BELIEVE You Can Conjugate This Verb)? Posted by on May 29, 2011

Attention! “Crois en moi” and “crois-moi” don’t mean the same thing: The former means “believe in me”, while the latter, a bit less demanding, simply means “believe me”… Now, crois-moi (believe me), la conjugaison of the verb CROIRE is not that complicated! * * * But before putting your conjugaison skills to the test, here are…

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The First Hit of French Rap Posted by on Apr 15, 2011

Ever wondered what the first French Rap song was like? Well, in case you didn’t know it yet, the first super hit of le rap français (French Rap) came out, not from France, but from “le Plat Pays” (“the Flat Country”), designating either a specific region of la Belgique (Belgium), the one to which Jacques Brel…

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Jacques Brel vs. Colonel Gaddafi: Zangra Meets Zenga Zenga Posted by on Mar 31, 2011

IF someone told you that Colonel Gaddafi‘s life-long vocation as a deeply confused dictateur (dictator) traced back its origin to the military career of a World War II fascist foot soldier, whose mission was to resume the century-old Italian occupation of la Lybie, you probably would wonder how that could be the case. But what if, in…

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Les filles et les chiens (girls and dogs) Posted by on Mar 30, 2011

Perhaps Jacques Brel, who’s not particularly noted for having listed in any form of bataille des sexes (battle of the sexes) throughout his songs, would not have readily concurred with the famously unconventional French actor and playwright Sacha Guitry who once declared: “les femmes, c’est charmant, mais les chiens, c’est tellement plus fidèle” (“Women are pretty…

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