In the songs too, adults lived with girls who were too young…

Judith Godrèche recalled that there was a time when the influence a filmmaker had on her, at fourteen, could appear “cool”. Listening to certain songs again confirms this.

Well it’s Charles Aznavour who sings Come, give your sixteenth birthday. In 1963, he was approaching forty and for several years already, the sexual majority in France had been set at fifteen years – it still is – but we cannot help but feel a little embarrassed, especially today, especially after Judith Godrèche’s account of her adolescence as a fourteen-year-old actress, in the clutches of one filmmaker, then another.

But this song clearly illustrates the extent to which the memory of our popular culture carries embarrassing texts. In this case, Charles Aznavour has no other reason to record this title than the fact that he wrote it for a young man of twenty-one, Dany Logan – for whom the song sounds different.

And in a magnificent interview with our friends at France Inter, Judith Godrèche said she felt a little responsible, in retrospect, for the fact that, because of her relationship with Benoît Jacquot, which was by no means a secret, others young women of her age may have found it cool or glamorous – these are her words – for a forty-year-old man to live with a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl.

Judith Godrèche has nothing to reproach herself for but she is telling the truth on one point: at one time, yes, it was cool, this kind of relationship.

In the first episode of These songs that make the news this weekend you hear excerpts from:

Charles Aznavour, Give your sixteen years, 1963

Danny Logan, Give your sixteen years, 1963

Serge Gainsbourg, Ballad of Melody, 1971

Serge Gainsbourg, Sea, Sex and Sun, 1978

Serge Gainsbourg, No comment, 1984

Anthony, I call him Canelle, 1966

Michel Sardou, I want to marry him for one night, 1974

Georges Moustaki, Fugue in A minor, 1979

Georges Brassens, The Princess and the Croque-notes, 1972

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And you can also find the podcast on this link Behind our voices, with the writing and composition secrets of eight major artists of the French scene, Laurent Voulzy, Julien Clerc, Bénabar, Dominique A, Carla Bruni, Emily Loizeau, Juliette and Gaëtan Roussel.