I’m not big on national anthems. The only use I’ve ever seen in knowing what they are is as the answer for a once-in-a-blue-moon quiz question, but the French one, La Marseillaise, has had permanent dibs on my soft corner ever since I first gave it a proper listen, at the start of the 1998 World Cup finals (and later, when I realised it was the intro to All You Need Is Love).
This may seem like an odd niche for Zonuts to be dipping into, but I blame a recent bout of Asterix-reading for the fact that it just won’t get out of my head. And I recommend looking up a translation of the lyrics, they are not only beautiful, but also somewhat…bloody (no offence to any French people who find this- I just mean there are literal references to blood and slit throats, is all)
____________________
Édith Piaf- La Marseillaise
My favourite version, not only because it’s Piaf, but because of the sheer joy she seems to take in singing it. I’m not sure when this was recorded, but if I didn’t know better, I’d have said it was sometime during the WWII occupation of France. If you download/listen to nothing else in this post, don’t pass this one up- unless you have it, of course.
____________________
Serge Gainsbourg- Aux armes et cætera (reggae spin on the national anthem, that earned him a few death threats once it was out)
I’m not massively fond of this, partly because I first heard it when I was in the grip of an ‘I-hate-reggae’ mood, but it deserves better than to be heard under such circumstances.
____________________
Cassandre Berger- La Marseillaise (from the film La Môme a.k.a. La Vie en Rose, lip-synched by Pauline Burlet, the child actress in the clip. By all accounts, it’s a real-life incident…the life being that of Édith Piaf)
La Marseillaise (Casablanca). Probably my favourite scene.
Feedback