Edith Piaf - Prévert - When you sleep

Original Title: "Quand tu dors"
Text: Jacques Prévert
Music: Christiane Verger
Year: 1961

You, you sleep at night
Me, I have insomnia
I see you sleep, it makes me suffer

Your eyes closed
Your tall body lying down
It's funny but it makes me cry
And suddenly, here you are laughing
Laughing out loud while sleeping
Where are you right now?
Where are you gone really?
Maybe with another woman
Far away in another country
And with her you are laughing of me
You, you sleep at night
Me, I have insomnia
I see you sleep, it makes me suffer

When you are sleeping, I don't know if you love me
You're so close but still so far
I'm completely naked, huddled against you
But it's as if I wasn't there
Yet I hear a beating heart
I don't know if it's beating for me
I know nothing, I don't know anymore
I'd like for it to stop beating, your heart
If one day you stop loving me

You, you sleep at night
Me, I have insomnia
I see you dream
It makes me cry

Here comes the day
And suddenly you awaken
And you smile at me
You smile with the sun
And I don't think to the night anymore
You say the words always the same
Did you have a good night
And I answer like the day before
Yes honey, I slept well
And I dreamt of you like every night.

Cora Vaucaire's version:

Barbara's version:

Léo Ferré - The artist's life

Original Title: "La vie d'artiste"
Year: 1950

I met you by chance,
here, elsewhere or somewhere else
Maybe you remember it
Without knowing each other we fell in love
And even if it's not true
One has to believe in the ancient stories.
I gave you what I had:
What to sing, what to dream
And you believed in my Bohemia
But if you thought at twenty years old
That one can live of the spirit of time
Your point of view is not the same

This infamous end of the month
Which since we are you and me
Is coming back seven times a week
And our evenings without cinema
And my success which is not coming
And our uncertain means of sustenance

You see I haven't forgotten anything
In this statement of affair sad to make one cry
Which records our failure
You still have nice days ahead of you
Enjoy them my poor love
Beautiful years are passing by fast.

And now you are going away
Both we are going to grow old
Each for himself how sad that is
You can take the record player away
Me, I'll keep the piano
I continue my life of an artist

Later, without knowing why
A foreigner, a clumsy man
Reading my name on a poster
Will talk to you of my successes
But a little sad, you, who knows
You'll tell him that I flaunt myself.

Cora Vaucaire - Three little notes of music

Original Title: "Trois petites notes de musique"
Text:Henri Colpi
Music: Georges Delerue
Year: 1961

Three little music notes closed down in the heart of memory
Done with their racket, they are turning the page and are going to sleep
But one day without warning, they come back in memory

You, you wanted to forget a little overused tune in the streets of Summer
You, you'll never forget one street, one Summer, one girl who was humming.

La, la, la, la, I love you, was singing the old melody
La, la, my love, some words without anything sublime
As long as the rhyme always brings
An haunting holiday romance which harasses you

True, she was so pretty, so fresh radiant and you didn't catch her
True, for her first thrill
She was offering you a song to take as one

La, la, la, la, every dreaming, rhymes with ending
Yours doesn't make sense, ending before it starts
The time of a dance, the space of a refrain

Three little music notes
Which are screwing you over from the bottom of the memories
Raising a cruel stage curtain
On a thousand and one sorrows which refuse to die

Georges Moustaki - Loves end one day

Text: Georges Moustaki
Original Title: "Les amours finissent un jour"
Year: 1962

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
What's the point of regretting you
My beautiful love of one summer
Here already comes Winter
Soon the sky will be covered
With big clouds heavier
Than our love sorrow

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
What's the point of thinking to me
There are other men than me
To say the words you expect
To offer you new springs
To forget the past
To make it start over

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
What's the point of tearing each others off
Why suffer or cry
Nothing new under the sun
Everything is so much
So much the same
It'd be better from now on
To forget how we loved one another

Loves end one day
Lovers only love for a time
But us both it was different
We could have loved one another
For a long time, for a long time, for a long time

We could have loved one another
For a long time, for a long time, for a long time
Forever...

Cora Vaucaire's version:

Dominique A - Poetry

Original Title: "La poésie"
Year: 2018

Poetry went away
I suspect her of having passed by your place
Of having lied down in your bed
And of having listened to the rain over the roof
She has so little to confide
Not the kind to pour out her feelings too much. A few words
She left over your desk
A few deletions with a fountain pen
Then she went away
Then she went away

It took us a few days
To be a bit less blind and deaf, and find
That the air was a bit less heavy
Our shoulders hunched up a bit more, and think
That after having announced
A thousand times reported departure, she had
Removed the coat from the hook
Where it was hanging for centuries
Then went away
Then went away

Are we lost children?
Forest stretched as far as the eyes could see for the evening
Refuses to abandon us
To let all power to the darkness
On our story gotten off to a bad start
Full moon has been summoned to thwart
The traps of a too dark night
In the area around a slaughterhouse
Without a poem to save us
Without a poem to save us

I don't know why I was thinking
That she couldn't have gone away, without passing
By your place and on your desk
I saw the deletions made with a fountain pen, a few words
Which slipped over my skin
On your face, and on your hands they took
The rythm of a heart on borrowed time
And their skin was weak as well
But one would have to hold onto it
But one would have to hold onto it

Julos Beaucarne - In the memory of roses

Original Title: "De mémoire de rose"
Year: 1975

In the memory of roses
Never has a garderner been seen dieing
If just a pause
Can't be sufficient for you
Madam, leave
The time stretch
Without cursing it, be patient
Let yourself slide in the light wind
Patience, be patient

If love flies away
Blame only yourself
You ran away from school
For the bed of a King
If her white veil
Is no more than a fog
Do not hang yourself from the branch
As soon as it'll be dark
Do not hang yourself from the branch
As soon as it'll be dark, because

In the memory of roses
Never has a garderner been seen dieing
If just a pause
Can't be sufficient for you
Madam, leave
The time stretch
Without cursing it, be patient
Let yourself slide in the light wind
Patience, be patient

Keep deep inside
Deep inside yourself
A void, a place
Behind the feasts
Where to lay your head
In the wind of the evening
Rock those old dreams
Even if it's dark
Rock those old dreams
Even if it's dark, because

In the memory of roses
Never has a garderner been seen dieing
If just a pause
Can't be sufficient for you
Madam, leave
The time stretch
Without cursing it, be patient
Let yourself slide in the light wind
Patience, be patient

Georges Brassens - In the woods of my heart

Original Title: "Au bois de mon coeur"
Year: 1957

In the woods of Clamart there are some little flowers,
there are some little flowers,
there are some friends in the woods of my heart,
in the woods of my heart.

At the back of my courtyard I'm famous
I'm famous
for having a disreputable heart
A disreputable heart

In the woods of Vincennes there are some little flowers,
There are some little flowers,
there are some friends in the woods of my heart,
in the woods of my heart.

When my cask runs out of wine
When my cask runs out of wine
In my cask,
They aren't afraid of drinking my water,
Of drinking my water.

In the woods of Meudon there are some little flowers,
There are some little flowers,
There are friends in the woods of my heart,
In the woods of my heart.

They go with me to the town hall,
They go with me to the town hall,
To the town hall,
Everytime I get married,
That I get married.

In the woods of Saint-Cloud there are some little flowers,
There are some little flowers,
There are friends in the woods of my heart,
In the woods of my heart.

Every time I die faithfully,
Faithfully,
They follow my funeral procession,
My funeral procession.

Some little flowers
Some little flowers
In the woods of my heart
In the woods of my heart

Live: