Song of the Day 9/10: Joe Dassin, “Les Champs-Elysées”
You might have heard this song while you were watching the Paris Olympics last year, or Wes Anderson’s “Darjeeling Limited.” It was a huge hit for Joe Dassin in 1969, when it sold 600,000 copies in France alone and made the charts all over Europe. Back then the Champs-Elysées was known for its nightlife, as opposed to today, when it’s known for its luxury-goods chain stores.
It’s about as French as a song can get without being sung by Edith Piaf or Serge Gainsbourg. Just one problem: Except for the lyrics, the song isn’t French at all. It’s an English tune, originally titled “Waterloo Road” and recorded by a long-forgotten psychedelic band called Jason Crest. They were probably singing about London’s Waterloo Road, which runs past the Waterloo train station and the Old Vic theatre on the city’s south bank. It has exactly none of the cachet of the Champs-Elysées.
Jason Crest – there was nobody in the band with that name, though they had a song about a character named Justin Crest – released five singles in 1968, all of which flopped. “Waterloo Road” was written by members of a group called the Four Pennies, which had disbanded by the time Jason Crest recorded it.
“Les Champs-Elysées” doesn’t even have the distinction of being sung by a native Frenchman. Joe Dassin was born in Brooklyn and only moved to Paris at age 12, after his father, film director Jules Dassin, was blacklisted during the Red Scare. After the song’s success, he recorded it in a variety of other languages – German, English, Italian, even Japanese. Other singers from other countries also jumped on the bandwagon. Versions appeared in Dutch, Danish and at least three of the languages they spoke in Yugoslavia.
Dassin was only 40 when he died of a heart attack while vacationing in Tahiti, but the song has lived on. Here’s a version by Pomplamoose, featuring Nataly Dawn on vocals. Like Dassin, she was born in the U.S. but grew up in France.
Well, that was a delightful change of pace. I loved that Dassin’s version really leaned into and kept the original’s clangy, almost Spike Jones, arrangement. Pomplamoose softens it but is still a great version. I also loved finding out that my weak-ass french is still good enough to follow along.
It was on my mind because the gilets jaunes used it in protests in 2018, when they trashed the Champs-Elyseés, and there was a big nationwide general strike today in France, the biggest since then.
The French really know how to get results through mass protest.
That’s because they get so much practice. There is at least one manifestation in Paris every weekend, usually several.
So, I had to make my way across Paris today despite the many manifestations across the city and almost all the signs were pretty much the same as the ones that could be carried in any American protest: TAXE THE RICHE. The worldwide annoyance with the rich seems to be pretty profound but the obsession with the behavior of these folks continues: We can’t get enough of watching the Bezos wedding, rich girls riding rockets into space, TV shows about the Gilded Age robber barons and overpriced, overbred little dogs that are so badly crippled by genetic twisting they cannot breathe. Oh well, vive la France. Those of us who live here never go near the Champs Elysee, it’s for tourists only.