It’s a song that resembles us. Edith Piaf and the kiss from “La Vie en rose”

Edith Piaf, who had become the most popular singer in post-war France, began an American career, driven by the immense success of “La Vie en rose”, a song she wrote.

In partnership with the exhibition It’s a song that resembles us – Worldwide hits of French-language popular music At the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, these chronicles look in detail at each of the stories presented there.

“It’s a song I wrote, ‘La vie en rose’.” That’s what Edith Piaf said on the evening of January 4, 1956, on the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York, where she was the first popular music star to sing. It was the end of the concert, everyone was waiting for this moment. Piaf began by singing the chorus. This is often done in American show business. We begin with what is most effective in the song. But you know the first verse, of course. It is obviously found on the first recording of the song by its author, some ten years earlier.

This first verse that Piaf wrote, but that she did not sing in New York, this big laugh on her lips, it designates someone quite precisely: Yves Montand. In the fall of 1945, when Edith Piaf wrote La vie en roseshe is in the midst of a love affair with this young singer from Marseille who has moved to Paris. She wrote him a few songs, including this one, which appeared on a 78 rpm record from Odeon. At the same time as the record with In the plains of the Far West And Luna Park which marks the start of Montand’s singing career. He is 24, Piaf is 30 and she is both the most popular female singer in France after the years of the occupation and a songwriter that the profession is beginning to notice. And that is why his girlfriend Marianne Michel, who is to Marseille song what Edith Piaf is to French song in general, asks him for a song for which “the kid” writes the lyrics next to her, on the terrace of a brasserie on the Champs-Élysées, under the beautiful sunshine of spring 1945.

In this episode of This song reminds me of usyou hear excerpts from:

Edith Piaf, La vie en rose (in public at Carnegie Hall), 1956

Edith Piaf, La vie en rose, 1946

Yves Montand, She has, [1945

Marianne Michel, La vie en rose, [1945

Edith Piaf, La vie en rose, 1946

Edith Piaf, La vie en rose (in public at Carnegie Hall), 1956

Edith Piaf, La vie en rose, 1946

You can also extend this column with the book This song reminds me of us published by Heritage Publishing.

You can also follow the news of this column on X (ex-Twitter).