With 8 days remaining to vote, let's have
SPOTLIGHT SEPT
As seen (and heard on the playlist) in songs we are rating here like
Avec Le Temps,
Fini La Comedie or
Je Suis Malade, Dalida was an artist who never shied away from sharing many of the most trying and painful aspects of her life in song. Evidently, this means there are a few more tracks that are emotionally heavy that are not part of the tracklist. Let's look at two of those!
First up is an album track that Dalida performed live a fair bit called
Une Femme À Quarante Ans (A Woman At 40 Years Old) that showcases Dalida's past and her then current life. Lines like "
Au soleil de mes 18 ans; Je voguais sur des bateaux ivres; Et les Rimbaud de mes tourments" are very Dalida when one looks at her romantic life in detail yet are still very relatable considering the eventual growth we experience with each failure. Instead of clamouring to that era however, the continuing lyric (while mentioning a few of the lows of her life) is hopeful and points out the satisfaction and contentment one feels at a later age - where we are generally more settled and appreciative of a simpler life: "
Je ne regrette rien vraiment; Autour de moi la mer est calme; Les Rimbaud de mes 18 ant; N'osent pas m'appeler Madame". The beauty of this song for me is around the 'Fuck You' message this gave to her critics at the time. Many interviewers and news articles had very nasty things to say or imply around Dalida's age and how she was a 'has been' by the 1980s and was too old (something Dalida had first experienced as early as in the 60s with some nastier promoters and label executives with the rise of the Yé-Yé genre), so to have Dalida sing about her wiser years was the greatest version of The Best Revenge Is Living Well! We stan a Queen who takes the high road!
The second song is unfortunately a wrench to my heart (and many a fan's if I look at the response on YouTube)! As I mentioned in my opening post when I gave a little overview of Dalida's life, the events that lead Dalida to sing
Il Venait D'Avoir Dix Huit Ans were also some of the darkest of her life. A botched abortion when she became pregnant during this relationship left her unable to ever have children. Being from a Catholic background where both abortion is considered a sin, and to bear children an expectation - the guilt and self-loathing that this ordeal would have created can barely be imagined.
Lucas, a 1983 song from her Les P'tits Mots album (which houses the amazing
Mourir Sur Scène we are rating) details the 'would be' life of Dalida as the mother of a little boy Lucas and the motherly love she would never experience in her lifetime. True to most of her more impactful songs, the heartache comes from the more everyday pleasures she details in lines like "Les grands magasins vont fermer / Il se fait tard il faut rentrer / Donne-moi la main pour traverser,
Lucas" Disclaimer: I may once have had a cat named Lucas due to this song.
I will say to many of you, Dalida has a discography that is very much worth exploring in all the 694 songs she has recorded and these beautiful
@CorgiCorgiCorgi ,
@ohnostalgia &
@unnameable - esque PJOPS potentials - there will certainly be painful existential relatability for everyone to discover.. PS: Keep sending tracks this beautiful you three!