Silly Little Country

Serendipity - Francoise Hardy Version

With unexpected time on my hands, I am watching 'Metroland' (which is actually surprisingly good) and about 48 minutes in a wonderful sad song appears on the soundtrack. Sounded like Francoise (sorry, don't do those cedillas and accents on this machine) Hardy! And it IS! And it is this song, which I do not recall from my period as one of her fanboys.

The ONE song of hers I can not forget, mind you, is one of those featuring the subjunctive mood, rapidly vanishing from English (and perhaps other European languages; it belongs to an era when language was owned by a small minority).

I noticed that the Boys and Girls song was covered by Annie Lennox and noted that YouTube can invite a certain cruelty.
Here is the video:

The cruelty is a comment, which is actually stupid, if a bit entertaining.
"les roues de Paris".
OK C'mon we Anglos will never actually get the French 'u' (ditto the German 'u-umlaut'). Give us a break. You guys do not get 'th'. In fact is there a single French- or German- native language speaker other than SillyWife who can make the voiced aand unvoiced 'th' sounds work correctly. I do not know one.
(A Side Point: Francoise Hardy's songs are often rather self-pitying. Now it may be true that supermodels cannot get dates (little would I know) but as I watch her videos I am unconvinced that she really ever had a problem of the sort she features in her songs.)
UPDATE 2: Forget that this is ridiculous for Francoise Hardy. It is also ridiculous for Annie Lennox! Like why are all those other boys and girls out there? I am pretty sure lots of boys want Hardy and Lennox to hold hands with them. How goofy can we get?

posted by Alan Adamson @ 11:27 AM