Tag: jacques Brel

Listen to The French Connection ::  December 28, 2025

Bardot

DECEMBER 28, 2025 SALUT!

  • Boris Vian “J’Suis Snob”

REST IN PEACE, B.B.
“I gave my beauty and my youth to men, and now I am giving my wisdom and experience … the best of me, to animals.”

  • Brigitte Bardot “La Madrague” (1963)
  • Brigitte Bardot & Serge Gainsbourg “Bonnie & Clyde” (Serge Gainsbourg) (1967)

POST-WAR CHANSON
Smoky cafés, cobblestone streets, and a deep longing for a pre-war idealized Paris

  • Léo Ferré “Noël” (1961)
  • Catherine Sauvage “Avec Le Temps”
  • Léo Ferré “Le Vampire” (Baudelaire)
  • Barbara “Göttingen” (Monique Andrée Serf)
  • Barbara “Les Voyages” (Monique Andrée Serf)
  • Barbara “Ne Me quitte Pas (Jacques Brel)
  • Jacques Brel “Quand on n’a que l’amour” (Brel)
  • George Brassens “La Prière” (Francis Jammes / Brassens)
  • George Brassens “Le Piere Noël et le Petit Fille” (Brassens)
  • Catherine Sauvage “Black Trombone” (Serge Gainsbourg)
  • Léo Ferré “Saint Germaine des Pres” (Ferré)

Source: The French Connection :: Playlist and replay – WRIU 90.3 FM

Listen to “The French Connection” Ep. 8

This Sunday’s FRENCH CONNECTION on WRIU 90.3 FM mourns the end of Summer with a theme, “Seasons in the Sun”

By Michael Stevenson

( This program originally aired on WRIU, Kingston, 90.3 FM on Sunday, August 24 )

“Seasons in the Sun” playlist, THE FRENCH CONNECTION :: WRIU 90.3 FM :: August 24, 2025:
  • Gilbert Bécaud “Plein Soleil” (1964)
  • Brigitte Bardot “La Madrague” (1963)
  • Yael Naem “Playground Family / You Have Always Been” (from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Mon Bébé)  2019
  • Jeanne Cherhal “Canicule” (2006)
  • Françoise Hardy “Soleil” (1970)
  • Toots Thielmans “Theme From Summer of ’42” (M. Legrand) rec. 1987 live concert
  • Yves Montand “Les Feuilles Mortes” (m.Jacques Prévert, l.Joseph Kosma) lyrics for “The Autumn Leaves” by Johnny Mercer (recorded 1952)
  • This Is the Kit “Recommencer” (Kate Stables, 2021)
  • Henri Salvador “Jardin d’Hiver” (Henri Salvador, Keren Ann & Benjamin Biolay, 2000)
  • Django Rheinhardt & the Quintet of the Hot Club of France “September Song” (m.Kurt Weil, l.Maxwell Anderson) recorded 1947
  • Blossom Dearie “It Might As Well Be Spring” (Rogers & Hammerstein, recorded 1957)
  • Jack Kerouac “October” (reading)
  • Francis Cabrel “Octobre” (1994)
  • Black Box Recorder “Seasons in the Sun” (Jacques Brel, recorded 1998)
  • Camille Saint-Saëns “Carnival of the Animals” (composed 1886)

I Tell You It Is October!
by Jack Kerouac

There’s something olden and golden and lost
In the strange ancestral light,
There’s something tender and loving and sad
In October’s copper might.

End of something, old, old, old…
Always missing, sad, sad, sad…
Saying something…love, love, love…

Akh! I tell you it is October,
And I defy you now and always
To deny there is not love

Staring foolishly at skies
Whose beauty but God defies.

For in October’s ancient glow
A little after dusk
Love strides through the meadow
Dropping her burnished husk…

“I Tell You It Is October” appears in Jack Kerouac Collected Poems, published by The Library of America in 2012

Comme une Française: Use these French lyrics to woo an old love

Comme une Française

Love changes over the years, and nothing expresses it better than this romantic love song in French by Belgian singer Jacques Brel.

Welcome back to this special series, where I teach you how to learn French using love songs in French! Today, I have a beautiful, quite melancholic song for you to discover. Love changes. A couple is not the same after a lifetime together. Jacques Brel explains that very well when he writes the beautiful, beautiful La Chanson des Vieux Amants (= Song of the Old Lovers.) Let’s use this song to learn more about romantic French. Perhaps you can practice saying these lyrics to your significant other?

Take care and stay safe. 😘 from Grenoble, France.

Géraldine