Édith Piaf

They call her piaf, the "sparrow", because of her small, frail build, and for a voice as limpid as it is desperate, at times cracking under the weight of its own emotion, yet vibrating like few other sound frequencies ever committed to record. It's hard not to romanticize her exploits, as was often the case with artists of that era, but Édith Piaf truly lived on a train running perpetually at full speed, never sparing herself a single moment of vice or virtue.

When director Olivier Dahan made “La Môme” (“La vie en rose” for the international market) in 2007, the film could hardly avoid being raw, sharp-witted and not without the poetic license typical of showbiz biopics, but it was also elevated by a stunning Marion Cotillard, who won an Academy Award for the role. Such is the enduring fascination of Édith Piaf, decades after her death, an eternal icon of French chanson.

And to think that, on more than one occasion, her story might never have come to be at all. Born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Paris in 1915 into utter poverty and immediately abandoned by her mother Annetta, a cabaret performer, the little girl spent her childhood in a brothel in Normandy run by her grandmother, cared for between clients by the prostitutes who lived there. For a long stretch, a severe case of keratitis left her virtually blind; legend has it the illness only cleared up after a pilgrimage to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. By the time her father Louis, a contortionist, finally turned up to take her on the road performing with him, Édith was fourteen; it was then that she began singing on street corners to collect a few coins in a hat.

But the anecdotes are countless, from her life on the streets to passersby left spellbound by her voice, not to mention her early taste for drink — the girl was already drinking like a fish, since Paris nightlife was hardly navigable any other way. In 1933, at just seventeen, Édith gave birth to her only child, Marcelle, who tragically died of meningitis barely two years later, another deep trauma that would leave her psychologically unable to build a family of her own, despite her burning desire to do so.

Worth remembering too are the accusations of criminal association that, for a time, jeopardized her career: Louis Leplée, a well-known businessman who was the first to have her sing in his nightclub and who was something of a second father figure to Édith, was murdered under suspicious circumstances in April 1936. The killing was never solved, but the clues pointed to a circle of characters with whom Édith had shared her days on the street, a scandal that splashed her across every newspaper. Nor would the period of Nazi occupation prove any easier, as we'll see further on.

Needless to say, Édith reached the end of her days in a pitiful state, ravaged by alcoholism and a severe morphine addiction, initially prescribed by a doctor after a serious car accident alongside Charles Aznavour, her assistant at the time. But by the time her light went out, at her country house in Grasse in October 1963, at just forty-seven, the world had already come to know a brilliant artist: her voice and her small frame beneath two finely drawn eyebrows had made history, and thousands would follow her funeral procession. Like Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and Judy Garland, Édith too lived a chaotic life shot through with immense talent, a talent nourished precisely by the need to transcend the traumas and joys she encountered along the way.

It's certainly no easy task to capture the art of Édith Piaf in a single record, given an extensive catalogue of recordings that stretches from her roaring cabaret beginnings in the Thirties to the great internationally successful songs — how could one fail to mention, for instance, the indomitable “Non, je ne regrette rien”, recorded in 1960 as a desperate epitaph in the face of a tragic life in free fall.

Originally released in January 1949 as a four-record box set, “Chansons parisiennes” nonetheless captures the essence of what was perhaps her happiest and most productive period, not just in terms of her discography but on a personal level too. The eight songs on the tracklist portray the moods and colors of postwar Paris, recounting, through allegories, character sketches and personal situations, the stories of a people at once colorful, desperate, romantic and playful.

While it's true that Édith's discography is nowadays mostly consumed through the countless posthumous compilations, or at best through the Olympia and Carnegie Hall concerts, “Chansons parisiennes” remains a unique testament to its era — not only for the famous songs it contains, but also for the lesser-known ones, which shed light on unexpected facets of this legendary performer. Listened to even today, it offers a window onto an already distant past, one that should never be forgotten.

À Paris

Paris the beautiful, Paris the grey; from the hill of Montmartre stretches, as far as the eye can see, an ocean of zinc rooftops, spires and bell towers. But down among the city's wrinkles, in the streets and the market squares, life teems with thousands of people and their small, grand stories. Some are gloriously lucky: “Les amants de Paris” is among the sunniest tracks Édith ever recorded, a lavish backdrop of choir and small orchestra over which the singer embroiders images of lovers seized by the promise of a radiant future, the spring sun warming their passions within a frame of lilac blossom. It's hard to imagine a more classic postcard, the disarming innocence of a people who emerged from the war penniless, yet determined to keep living until their very last breath.

Others, however, suffer that tragic, quintessentially Parisian sense of humor, which one can never quite tell is good-natured or cruel. Written by Michel Emer, “Monsieur Lenoble” is more a mask of local folklore than an actually existing character, a poor husband abandoned by his wife in favor of a more adventurous, sensitive artist. Reading between the lines, in fact, one senses Lenoble's hardness of heart, a man of iron principle, respected at work but evidently unable to satisfy his wife's desires. The sad epilogue follows: once in his pajamas, the protagonist goes to bed leaving the gas tap open so as never to wake again, a genuinely melodramatic little scene, yet one that Édith delivers with such serene tenderness that, even as it moralizes, it also offers an embrace.

But “Chansons parisiennes” wouldn't be complete without a nod to another gloomy continental melodrama: the weather. Written by Pierre Roche and Charles Aznavour, “Il pleut” unfolds like the daguerreotype of a grey rainy day, the city weeping tears from its rooftops and gutters, umbrellas blooming like mushrooms in the street, the houses catching cold and life behind the windows turning sad and dull. But through the orchestra's swelling crescendo, which tracks Édith's shifting moods, “Il pleut” also delivers the most sinuous melody on the record, a classically conceived chanson, yet touched by an unexpected jazz inflection that still feels captivating today.

The spy and the whore

When the Germans marched on Paris in May 1940 with the most powerful army of the moment, Édith was already an established singer. The Nazi generals loved her performances and invited her to write new songs, subject to censorship of course, though every now and then some patriotic French motif slipped through, for which she'd be reprimanded but never imprisoned. Protected on the strength of her artistic merit, Édith found herself in a strangely favorable position, able to advance her career irrespective of any political affiliation — she would never betray the French cause, yet at the same time she enjoyed the benefits afforded by the occupying army.

For a time she lodged in the rooms of Madame Billy, the madam of a brothel who also entertained Nazi soldiers while secretly sheltering partisans and Jewish refugees. Among them was Andrée Bigard, who posed as Édith's secretary and used her favorable standing with the Third Reich to spy on troop movements. The most curious anecdote, though disputed by some, concerns a promotional tour in Germany, during which Édith performed for Nazis and prisoners of war — some even whisper the Führer himself was in attendance (an indiscretion never confirmed); according to Bigard, the souvenir photos Édith took with the prisoners were developed and used to forge passports and free as many people as possible.

There are those, then, who believe that Édith was mainly protecting her own interests, given that her involvement with the French Resistance is never apparent in a first-person way. But there are also those who argue that the singer kept up appearances in order to play a double game, indirectly or otherwise helping many people dear to her who fought for the liberation.

This is why the legacy of a seemingly minor song like "Le chant du pirate", with its bouncy ohh-ohh choruses, opens itself up to multiple readings. Read as a rowdy cabaret number about a galleon in the Sargasso Sea, the song describes the pride of corsairs ready to die for their way of life, indifferent to the noose awaiting them — a description that could just as easily fit the Nazis as the partisans.

Once the war was over, Édith too would have to face the tribunal of the épuration légale, along with many other public figures, including the famous and far more compromised designer Coco Chanel. In Chanel's case, it would be the British prime minister Winston Churchill himself who guaranteed her safety so she could return to France, a fact that would go on to enrage the public — we know all too well what the famous American comedian Bill Burr thinks about it today. Coming to Édith's aid were Bigard himself and many other colleagues, most notably Michel Emer, a Jewish man whom Édith had personally smuggled away and hidden during the occupation.

A complex legacy, then, one often deliberately overlooked so as not to tarnish the public image of an icon that many would rather keep untouchable. But these stories too are part of the twentieth century, and above all of Édith's own art of interpretation — she was a human being like any other, faced with events of such magnitude. Because, stripped of the after-the-fact simplifications found in school textbooks, war as it's actually lived is always a great confusion, and it's important to remember that.

The lover

Édith the incurable romantic, but also Édith the libertine beyond any creed; raised in a brothel in Normandy with a group of prostitutes as caretakers, accustomed to the hoarse, boozy nightlife of the capital, the singer was never timid, nor did she let herself be constrained by the morality of her times — especially once success arrived, allowing her to leave behind a beggar's existence and rent luxury apartments.

Her rendition of "Un refrain courat dans la rue" is, in this sense, prophetic: the song depicts the allegorical figure of a melody darting through the streets like Cupid, brushing past passersby on the tip of a waltz with a nimble interplay of accordion and violins, a sinuous, personified portrait of love in flight over a refined harmonic backdrop.

There's little point restating how central love is to popular song, but for Édith the matter was especially serious. There would be many men in her life, besides her two official husbands, among them the cyclist Louis Gérardin (who confessed that forty-eight hours with Édith were more exhausting than the Tour De France), the actor John Garfield, and fellow musicians Norbert Glanzburg and Yves Montand — the love letters Édith wrote have been published in a dedicated volume, "Mon amour bleu" (2011), a read that might seem voyeuristic, but one that reveals a woman at times too in love for her own good, lonely and embittered, overwhelmed as much by desire as by guilt.

But it was with the Franco-Algerian boxer Marcel Cerdan, the celebrated middleweight champion of the 1940s, that the singer formed a highly scandalous liaison, since he had a wife and children waiting for him at home at the end of every bout. The two met in the summer of 1948; Édith was often touring America, Marcel was in New York, and far from home and prying gossip, the lovers proved simply inseparable. "C'est marveilleux" is another waltz, this time au ralenti, over which the singer's voice trembles before the endless possibilities of a tender passion that seems unshakeable; far from vulgar or licentious, though, the song wraps around the listener like a silk glove.

We know all too well, however, how much bitter surprise life can hold in store; Édith herself had already lived through plenty of tragedy, and when called upon she knew how to give herself over with feeling and nuance. The gorgeous "Adieu mon cœur", one of the quietest, most sensitive performances of her career, is thus the exact emotional counterpart to "C'est marveilleux": a slow, barely-there ballad set over a hushed orchestra, with faint swinging touches of brass and the low murmur of double bass in the background forming an unusual backdrop for staging a mournful farewell that, as the lyrics put it, "ends up in prison".

In the case of Édith and Marcel, fate would prove even crueller: in October 1949, the plane carrying the famous boxer from Paris to New York crashed over the Azores, killing everyone on board. The accident made headlines worldwide, given Marcel's fame; for Édith, the loss was irreparable, marking the onset of a deep depression that would follow her, quiet but devastating, for the rest of her days.

La vie en rose

There could be no other way to close. The universal anthem, still to this day the best-known melody in Édith's entire body of work, a song that has crossed every era, every border and every language barrier: "La vie en rose", life through rose-colored glasses.

Édith wrote the lyrics herself in late 1945, right after the end of the Second World War, while the music was arranged by Louiguy, real name Louis Guglielmi, a French singer-songwriter of Italian descent.

It was a delicate time: Europe lay in ruins, the population was traumatized, the jubilation over the end of the Nazi occupation had only just faded, and it was now time to dig through the rubble to rebuild some semblance of the lost normality. It would have been all too easy to slip into sentimentality, so much so that at first the song wasn't considered up to par with the rest of the catalogue — Édith herself offered it to two other popular singers of the time, Marguerite Monnot and Marianne Michel, who both turned it down, forcing the author to record her own version. And what a version it is: masterfully balanced between the pensive verse and the soaring chorus, at once stately and relaxed in its pace, "La vie en rose" is the perfect chanson, distilling the mood of its era, from the plucked strings arrangement to the cornet accents, with Édith's voice giving hope to the entire world in just three minutes.

Along with “Volare” and “Garota de Ipanema”, “La vie en rose” remains one of the most celebrated and immortal tunes of the twentieth century. Reason enough to make Édith Piaf one of the key figures of musical France in the last century, a small, desperate woman with a messy, chaotic life, brilliant and painfully honest: the star and the beggar, the bride and the whore, a singer-songwriter the likes of which will never exist again.

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14/09/2025