Nel blu, dipinto di blu by Domenico Modugno

Nel blu, dipinto di blu is likely more well know as Volare.  If you haven’t heard this song before, it’s about time.  I think it’s likely the most famous song Italians have ever produced that doesn’t have an operatic voice singing it.  Nel blu, dipinto di blu is a beautiful, surreal song that inspires with the sustained vowels sung by Modugno during the chorus.  

Modugno’s from the south and often sung about typical life and was kind of funny.  His other music is much more locally silly with sort of country Italian living at the forefront of his lyrics.

Volare charted #1 with a memorable harp that makes it the whole song seem fairy tale like, otherwise it has a big band sound run by the piano.  It’s so easy to sing along, so I’m sure if you listen a few times you’ll be singing the pre-chorus with anyone you have around you, as it’s easy there are just Oh words, “Volare” (to fly), “Oh,” and “Cantare.”  And of course, I love the lyrics, it’s about looking into a lover’s eyes and getting lost in a dream.

I think a dream like this would never happen again

I painted blue my face and hands 

At an instant, a wind took me then

as I began flying in the sky that doesn’t end 

To fly, oh-oh

To sing, oh-oh-oh-oh

In blue painted blue

up above, I’m happy, it’s true

And I flew, happily

Past the sun and even further away

Below, the world became smaller and went astray

just for me, music played sweetly

To fly, oh-oh

To sing, oh-oh-oh-oh

In blue painted blue

up above, I’m happy, it’s true

But every dream disappears with the sunrise because

When the moonsets it takes with her what was

to dream in your beautiful eyes, I continue 

Like stars in a sky that are blue

To fly, oh-oh

To sing, oh-oh-oh-oh

In blue painted blue

up above, I’m happy, it’s true

And I continue to fly, happily

Past the sun and even higher

While the world became smaller and disappeared,, way down there

just for me, music played sweetly

To fly, oh-oh

To sing, oh-oh-oh-oh

In your eyes so blue

I’m happy to be down here… it’s true

In your eyes so blue

I’m happy to be down here with you… it’s true

Au Claire de la Lune by MC Solaar

My 2nd favorite song of MC Solaar’s which comes immediately after the Si On T’demande on Chapitre 7.  I almost always listen to the two songs together, sometimes on repeat.

Au Claire de la Lune uses the French Folk song and lullaby that has lyrics about a person left outside at night asking to come in.  In MC Solaar’s version of the song we hear his version of that played over the lullaby referring always back to the kid soldiers that were well documented in Africa.  There were movies like Beasts of No Nation that would come out in the coming years covering the same topics.

The beat is relaxing, but somehow menacing with the harmonies of the keyboards and chorus of women singing in the background where you get this sad, melancholic treatment of color.  On top of that, MC Solaar’s delivery is varied, mostly in rhythm.  He has this sort of wave of talking steady where he slowly goes up in emphasis before he cools it down at the end of his phrases.  He’s just a great storyteller who makes everything rhyme and again here uses many pop and international geopolitical references.

My favorite part is where he says he’s talking to the left, the right, the center (moderates), then he breaks the rhyme to say we need to reconsider our attention to think about child soldiers. He does it once again to end the song saying what’s necessary are the kids’ minds to save the child soldiers.

Below is a translation of the lyrics, only the first few words are in English:

Six in the morning (in English)

First thing are errands

If you like to be in a hurry

if you like to be on top of things: run!

The little girls aren’t pagans

when they roll around Citroën

And aren’t of Virgin Mary’s

when their husbands are in Ferraris

At the bottom of the class are the idiots that watch like an eagle

They insult the teachers and take from Steven Seagal

They speak of their certain future

between themselves and tell you: shut up

Or maybe it’s bro what up,

Or family, or I’m listening to a single

The valors of the golden sheep

are violence and wads of cash

The class:

breaks wind at the peep shows in Las Vegas

One mustn’t ask why Benoît said to Aïda

That Adidas and Puma busts 10 times more than Al Qaïda

This loving chick I chose as a mentor

Asked for help for herself and for Darfour

I don’t want to wear the hat, man,

you’re not Madame de Fontenay

But there’s Britney’s life,

so please take your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)

Idi Amin Dada in Uganda there’s teens marching in step

Some thing think to escape, but won’t be adept

They dream of playing dada

but there they play AK

Enrolled in force

We must save the child soldiers

Fuck the bluff!

The chicken came before the egg

Eight before nine

and then PIF (Public Investment Fund) before Titeuf (comic book series)

For the cop chick with a cute caboose

We celebrate the coup

We protect the success

of not being weighed down by being rough & tough

We try to struggle against Global Warming

Man, thirst pulled the lever

Now, under the sun, we’re full of cans

The gadgets of China and the kids of Djen Chao Ping

Are powerful persuasions for SS20-Pershing (ballistic missile)

But I’m not Garcimore with a rabbit in my hat

It’s written in the Thai chronicle comics of police

Like Soumahoro said, if there’s words are a knife

It’s that I woke up with a booboo

So the hippie goes beddy-bye

The gladiator’s sword is close to my gut

So, to the demons, I say, “Man, Fuck!”

To Nokia I have Pinocchio that told me

Deuclo (shoe brand) is too early

I speak to the right

I speak to the left

I speak to the center

We need to recenter the ball

And concentrate on the child soldiers

If I were in Hamburg

He would say, “I am a hamburger.”

And his word would make butter, buzz, and biz

We can kill the sacred cows

To clone the double cheese

I would’ve been strong to resist

But I’m not accomplish

at building myself up

when my backpack weighs me down

I speak to you too about teens

Not every case is full of sleaze

You can tell me the hobo

That wears a watch from Rado 

The people are not the public

And the public aren’t people

It’s Heckel and Jeckel corrected by Proctor & Gamble

It’s not management’s that’s compulsory

It’s moving that’s mandatory

The kids’ meninges are necessary

To save child soldiers

Quelqu'un M'a Dit by Carla Bruni

This is an album I listened to on repeat when I was learning French.  Carla Bruni became famous for her looks as a model as a striking blue-eyed beauty who was one of the most famous supermodels in France.  She’s Italian & French but lived mostly in France and worked as a French model.  She then showed she was more than just a pretty face when she released this incredible soft rock in 2003.  She became even more famous marrying the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008.

Quelqu’un M’a Dit is full of acoustic guitar and her voice almost whispering in tune with one of the sexiest voices of all-time.  She speaks clearly without power, but as she says several times in her lyrics, with caress.  I listened to walking in the forest near my house and at night before bed learning French through her poetry and clear enunciating.  Also the guitars on the album are sick, the drums rest perfectly helping you mosey through the album and the strings support the entirely light structures to sturdiness.

She wrote the majority of the songs, although she doesn’t play instruments too much, her lyrics are very personal and talk about love and romance.  The combination of the gentle guitar, her sexy voice, and the poetry made for a surprisingly powerful debut.  I love the distortion slide guitar solo on Le Ciel dans une Chambre which fits perfectly in on a majority acoustic guitar album.

Because of her background as an Italian, she also does a popular Italian song, Il Cielo in una Stanza, and translates the lyrics to French, but still repeating lyrics in it’s original Italian form. 

I could go through every song and detail why the lyrics are incredible.  But here’s one: Le Toi du Moi is a standout as she just compares things in sets of 2 over and over showing the relationship of her and her lover, one even being “you’re the Beauty and I’m the Beast… I’m the sage and you’re the fool…”  It’s very honest saying with the comparisons of words, including intimate sections like, “you’re the whore, and I’m the pass…” where she whispers it.  Putain the word she uses for “whore” can also mean “bitch, or fucker”, but she’s being very coy.   She ends with “you’re my love, you’re my love.”

I’ll leave you with just the translation of the titles of the songs.

Quelqu’un M’a Dit - Someone Told Me (her biggest hit about gossip and hearing someone still loves her)

1. Raphaël - Raphael (about an old lover)

2. Tout le Monde - The Whole World

3. Le Noyée - The Drowned Girl

4. Le Toi du Moi - The You from Me

5. Le Ciel dans une Chambre - The Sky in a Bedroom (talks about beautiful nature scene she experiences from her bed with her friend, this is the Italian cover)

6. J’en Connais - I’m Familiar with It

7. Le Plus Beau du Quartiet - The Most Beautiful in the Neighborhood

8. Chanson Triste - Sad Song

9. L’excessive - The Excessive

10. L’amour - Love

11. Le Dernière Minute - The Last Minute

Carla Bruni tried to break into the English market with covers and adaptations of famous poets, but those albums are not nearly as good and feel forced.  Here she actually reveals what love means to her whereas the other albums felt more like commercial endeavors.

Hiding Places by Kenny Segal & Billy Woods

The first song, Spongebob reminds me of a mix of Connan Mockasin’s album Caramel mixed with some Harold Budd ambient music while they rap over it.  It’s psychedelically a unique vibe carried throughout the album.  The mood is similar to that 1990’s freaky rap and especially similar to Cypress Hill & Aesop Rock who both come from further out places in and around New York City.

In Checkpoints Billy Woods sounds more like Jay-Z in his delivery.  I really love how the crash cymbals play with the bass on that song,

Bedtime & Crawlspace fall more into an MF Dooom vibe it seems, but it still holds that darker Vince Staples vibe.  If any of you from Minnesota have heard of Heiruspecs, I think the attitude here matches that kind of excitement in music you don’t always hear.

Thank god for sax and reed instruments in Speak Gently.  They make me feel alive and in nature and they saved me a bit from the beautifully painted wasteland of the rest of the album. It’s also odd how there’s an elephant at the end of the track.  This album reminds me more and more of Vince Staple’s “Summertime '06” album where, likewise, a locality is painted in audio in black & white.  This land makes you feel uneasy at first, but it becomes too familiarly a dystopian home that feels cozy enough to stay in, as it's just the right temperature here.

Si On T'demande by MC Solaar feat. Bambi Cruz

I love MC Solaar.  He’s likely my favorite rapper next to Aesop Rock & Jay-Z.  The amazing thing about him is he tells stories like Country music, but still has that swagger.  He’s a bit boring in concert, but his albums are insane.  Born Dakar, Senegal at a young age he’s credited with popularizing rap in France.  This song Si On T’demande (If We Ask You) is my favorite song from my favorite album, Chapitre 7 (Chapter 7).  His flow is sick, he mixes it up, yet its seamless.  He also has an unreal step in from featured artist Bambi Cruz.  

My favorite part from the song is the delivery from Bambi Cruz “Les gens qui ment, on les tics n’est ce pas?”  That means “People who lie have tics, no?”  While he delivers that line he cracks his voice which seems like a mistake, but it’s him indicating his tick, showing he’s lying. He does this “cracking of his voice” earlier in all his question lines earlier in beginning his stanzas.  Should we believe anything he says?  It’s brilliant.

This song is less a story, but more of him showing his skills and dissing some random person who’s never named. In between insulting the nameless dude’s intelligence, and/or inexperience, and/or maybe it’s just unwillingness to be willing or able to share something about deep about himself. MC Solaar & Bambi Cruise walk around whoever that nameless guy is with their flow and incredibly varied knowledge about the world. They artistically reveal what they care about as older, wiser men. MC Solaar wanted to save the world but says he’s really just living. Bambi Cruz talks about being old, expressing how he sees interactions between women and men, and many other thoughts that come from his smart observances on the world he knows well.

The great thing about this rap is that not using anyone’s actual name to diss, they’re sort of dissing anyone else who isn’t them, especially young kids coming into the rap game. The rhymes are so sick we agree with them and declare them the winners of this fictional rap battle without knowing or caring who the nameless person is or if they did their (rap) battle before or after this song.

I have listened to this song just on repeat over and over and every verse blows me away every time and the chorus gives me chills.  Even though the mandolin really carries the beat, that fucking flute doesn’t hurt either.

French lyrics translated to English

Bold are the words Bambi Cruz cracks his voice with this delivery

MC Solaar

I wanted to change the the world like Bono & Yoko Ono

That without making clowning around, the masculinity or bonobo

I hideout in the streets like a functionaire of Beauvau (street in Paris)

Listening to Kid Loco, Powo Wow, and Lil’ Bow Wow

I loved K. Solo, Holiday of Monsieur Hulot

The scratches of DJ Polo, the nerve of Nico Hulot

Well ahead of No Logo, I believe that I was eco

Because I lived through Seveso, Chernobyl, and then Amoco

Claude-Claude, M-M, C-C, So-So, la-laar

oft-oft, en-en, two-two, time-times over just one, which it restarts

Maybe that secret can prepare Raffarin 2012 (presidential candidate)

Maybe the bamboo crisis is caused by Bambi Cruz

Now, I’ll break it down: the girls want big jugs

The men become crazy, they have photos of Rocco (famous movie)

Liquid flows, think solid, Alstom (railroad manufacturer)

The gas state are the words for Gazprom (Russian Energy Company)

Chorus

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

Bambi Cruz

Call me Submarina because the taffy is what me make in loucedé (secret Parisian language)

In order to breath fresh air in our area

One asks myself often,

Bambi Cruz, tell me what’s up?

The good pieces are more rare than the hair on our heads

Seriously, is God dead?  More hardcore

The seasons disappear in the Quartier Nord at Vercors (neighborhood in Paris at a mountain range)

Because mamas come from Panama savor my banana

Escalade like the ones that climb Himalaya

devour it like a Tagada (amusement ride)

Then they come to do dada on daddy

The most attractive pappa as the last Prada

The people who lie have ticks, no? 

If we ask you?  Well, you say you don’t know!

Chorus

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

There are more zeros behind their Euro

and even more they’re happy

Dude, you’re not zero net

we can save the planet

without making chicks

The Bible is the calculator

Chorus

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

Bambi Cruz

When we debark at the park in a 4x4 just chatting,

it claps. So, what’s that brand?

Chorus

If we ask you?

Well, you say you don’t know!

If we ask you?

MC Solaar

Name, Last, Age, Profession, Sex, or Religion?

Well, you say you don’t know!

Bambi Cruz

Are you brunette or blonde, skinny or round, dumb or the Mona Lisa?

Chorus

Well, you say you don’t know!

MC Solaar

Even if you know who’s going to win the World Cup and the lads ask you

Chorus

Well, you say you don’t know!

MC Solaar

If a dude in a parka approaches you and asks your name,

Well, you say you don’t know.

Song: La Flaca by Jarabe de Palo

La Flaca has a classical coastal vibe.  Of course this song is catchy, the rhythm and lead guitar drive the thing, and the drums constantly slap you in the face to keep movin’ on the dance floor, but the lyrics really push this for me song over.  That and the constant change in delivery and flow of the song.

In the life a woman known as the Skinny Girl

Coral black from Havana, extremely mulatto

A hundred pounds of skin and bone, forty kilos of Salsa

And in her face two suns that speak without words

Speak without words

The Skinny Girl sleeps during the day, they say that’s how she gets hungry

And when the night fals, she descends to dance with the glass

To dance and dance, and drink and drink

One beer after another, but she never gains weight

But she never gains wait

Chorus

For one kiss from the Skinny Girl, I’d give everything

For one kiss from her, I’d give everything

For one kiss from the Skinny Girl, I’d give everything

For one kiss from her, even just once

Even just once

Soaking wet are my white sheets, like the song says

Remembering the caresses that brought the first day

And I’m becoming insane trying to win favor to sleep by your side

Because, God, this skinny girl makes me crazy

She makes me crazy

Chorus

Chorus

The song may sound a bit misogynistic, which it is a bit. However, this guy singing is infatuated with this party girl who seems to be hiding so much of her life that she ends up burying some pain it each night in drink and dance.  He knows her well. If he’s a friend or an acquaintance, we can’t quite tell. But it’s obvious that he wants more. 

La Flaca is a song of intrigue where the lyrics give you just enough of the story to want more.  The harmonies lift you through the end, repeating the lyrics, “Even just once.”

I love it.

Song: What He Wrote by Laura Marling

I was introduced to this song by a former love interest. What He Wrote by Laura Marling has such a mood. The lyrics carry it, as its a woman recounting the end of one relationship that cut her deep, she constantly is reminded of him referring to a letter the man wrote. She starts of by saying she had nothing to say after the devastation, but then goes to tell the rest of the story, a bit ironically. Yet you don’t feel that irony at all, the listener only falls into her sorrow that cuts much deeper than melancholy. She expresses a regret that she doesn’t quite place what she actually regrets or what she would have changed, I think because she loved the relationship how it was. So in lieu of regret she immediately talks of real anger of when she fought the man that she fell for when he left and broke up with her, choosing war over her.

Laura seems to relate both of the men in her life in a perfect light. She in turn seems to see herself as the broken one. This leads to the men in her life having some kind of control over her. The only thing they can’t seem to control is her emotions and feelings that seem to be untamable.

Laura’s in love with the man who left her alone, but respects the man she’s with. The idea is that there are these 2 lives she could have had: she’s living one, and the other is with the man she truly loved. This new man forgave her, but the scent of the first man holds her memory, which is so lustful that you can almost imagine the sins that she constantly accuses herself of.

The song feels like another version of Sisyphus, but instead of a rock, there is this forever longing that plagues our singer, the hopeless romantic, of a life torn away from her due to war.

I learned this tune on guitar way back when and listened to it on repeat and have never gotten sick of it.

Song: Quand Je Marche by Camille

Performer: Camille

Composer: Camille Dalmais

Here’s one of my absolute favorite songs, it’s actually much longer than presented on Spotify, it’s normally 39 minutes, mostly of a drone that represents the album which is called “Le Fil” which means “the wire” or “the line” in this case it’s the through “line” this drone that’s meditative, this drone starts the album. But they cut it off on Spotify, because Spotify’s lame. The whole album is A Cappella except for a bass line. The bass line in the song is sick. The lyrics are so beautiful. Here’s the lyrics translated to English:

“When I walk, I walk.

When I sleep, I sleep.

When I sing, I sing

I let myself go

When I walk, I walk straight.

When I sing, I sing nude.

and when I love, I only love you.

When I think of you, I can’t sleep

Chorus

I’m here

I’m inside

I’m at the edge

I definitely won’t mock myself

‘Understand,’ you told me

’the world’s song.’ Hence, since then

When the sun rises, I am there

And when the night falls

I fall as well

Chorus

When I’m hungry, you nourish me

The howl of the dog, then the rain

When you leave, I wait here

I let myself go

And I forget you”

In the real song there’s an Easter egg at the very end of the drone in the album which is a huge payoff where Camille basically they said she couldn’t do an album like the one you just heard, but she says it’s false, it’s false.