Milestones

Alain Souchon

Name: Alain Souchon – C'est déjà ça
Item: C'est déjà ça
Author: Federico Romagnoli

C’est déjà ça

1993 (Virgin)

new chanson, singer-songwriter

by Federico Romagnoli

Alain Souchon, stage name of Alain Kienast, was 49 years old when, in 1993, the album "C'est déjà ça" made him one of France's most beloved singers: his career had been unconventional from the very start, with a recording debut in 1974 at the age of thirty, after a long spell spent playing in small clubs around Paris and its outskirts, not without financial struggles.

Left fatherless at fourteen, he always struggled at school, so much so that his mother, after he was expelled for poor discipline, decided to send him to study at a French lycée in England. Red tape prevented his enrollment, but the seventeen-year-old Alain stayed on anyway, working as a waiter for a year and a half, during which he came into contact with Anglo-American music, which, blending with his knowledge of French chanson chanson, would go on to shape his creative approach to music.

On the suggestion of Bob Socquet, head of RCA's local division, from his late entry into the record industry onward Souchon was paired with Laurent Voulzy, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist four years his junior with whom he would remain closely tied to this day: although the two kept separate careers, their records would almost always feature songs co-written by the pair, effectively forming one of the most towering songbooks in the history of French popular music.

Success was not long in coming: although he had never dominated the scene before the album under discussion here, Souchon had been a constant presence, with a solid and loyal following that had already carried five of his albums past the 300,000-copies-sold mark ("Jamais content" in 1977, "Toto 30 ans, rien que du malheur..." in 1978, "Ultra moderne solitude" in 1988, the live album "Nickel" in 1990, and the compilation "20 chansons" in 1992).

"C'est déjà ça" is his ninth studio effort, arriving after an unusually long five-year gap since its predecessor, "Ultra moderne solitude". Production and arrangements were handled by keyboardist Michel Cœuriot, who was one of the top French session musicians of the the Seventies, before establishing himself as a producer in the following decade (he had already worked alongside Souchon in 1985, on the album "C'est comme vous voulez"). Voulzy takes part in the recording of only one track, but co-writes four out of eleven, while the two most recurring session players are guitarist Michel-Yves Kochmann and bassist Guy Delacroix, among the most sought-after musicians on the local scene, featured on eight and six tracks respectively.

The sound is radically different from "Ultra moderne solitude": the five years in between are fully felt, with the axis shifting from sophisti-pop and new wave towards that blend of classic singer-songwriter tradition and alternative music (ranging, depending on the artist, context and moment, from guitar-driven rock to electronica) that would later be dubbed nouvelle chanson — a stylistic renewal of the great French-speaking tradition that produced some of Souchon's own declared touchstones, such as Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel and Léo Ferré.

The album opens with the song that remains Souchon's anthem to this day, "Foule sentimentale", jangle pop driven by an interplay of strumming acoustic guitar and electric arpeggios mixed into the background, with synthesized strings enriching the harmonies. Despite the sweetness of the music, the lyrics are a scathing indictment of consumerist society and the psychological damage caused by the constant imposition of perfect, successful role models by the mass media:

Caspita, la vie en rose,

the rose that pushes us

having so many things,

that make you want other things.

Bah, they make us believe

that happiness lies in having,

in having full closets,

mocking us because we are…

a bunch of sentimental fools,

thirsting for ideals,

drawn [more] to stars, to sails,

than to non-commercial things.

Bunch of sentimental fools,

look how they talk to us.

Out come,

from these packing crates,

dull, worn-out people,

sad, with no benefit at all.

They inflict upon us

desires that afflict us.

Let's be clear, they've been taking us for fools since birth,

because we are…

a mass of sentimental fools.

Claudia Schiffer, for us,

Paul-Loup Sulitzer, for us,

ah, how much they hurt us,

and there are those who've disfigured womanhood.

Down from the sky descends

a desire that envelops us:

for tomorrow, for our pale children,

something better, a dream, a horse

After the romantic "L'amour à la machine" – opening with brushed drums, bass jazzy and a resonator guitar solo – social themes take centre stage again with "Sous les jupes des filles", which over a rhythm dub where pattern electronic elements and guitar solos intertwine blues, paints a counterintuitive indictment of the sexism found across every society on the planet: the lyrics seem at first to be benevolent and indulgent toward the sense of ownership women are forced to endure, only to then flip the perspective with a stream of consciousness listing some of the distortions that, directly or indirectly, have also been fed throughout history by men's own frustrated masculinity:

If this sometimes bothers them and they don't want

let them look at their legs, the boys lose their heads

and so this is bound to happen:

men just like pigeons,

the beers, the Khmer Rouge,

every deer on the move,

blue fanfares, white and rage,

glasses of red and greens of rage,

the honor of the militias,

you'll be a man, my son

Jangle pop In a minor key, once again resting on interwoven electric-acoustic textures, “Les regrets” builds to an instrumental bridge that shifts into a major tonality, while Souchon's gentle voice, thinned by a light echo, reviews his own regrets, just as the title suggests:

Dreaming of Revolutions

on the riverbank,

there were illusions

in my hand that you left under your sweater.

Thinking ill of others, weakness,

never having studied,

the songs of my youth,

and of Robert Zimmerman [ed. note: Bob Dylan], the altitude

Halfway through the tracklist there's room for a couple of piano ballads, namely "Les filles électriques" and "Chanter c'est lancer des balles". The latter stands out in particular, with its vaguely sinister atmosphere created by the way it keeps shifting from a C minor chord to an A-flat seventh and back to C minor, never resolving onto C sharp as one might expect. The lyrics are a list of metaphors about the role of music:

Cantare è lanciare palline,

balloons we kick around

so someone can catch them,

and that "be-bop-a-lula"...

helium balloons

to make men grow up,

above the rain, in the solarium

“Arlette Laguiller” is dedicated to the far-left militant of the same name, spokesperson for the Lutte Ouvrière party from 1973 to 2008. Although Souchon's political views are more moderate, falling within the center-left spectrum, the song celebrates the activist's passion while still making a point of distancing Souchon from those views:

The words are certainly a bit worn out,

but she sings with a pure air,

she uses a mentholated freshness,

peppermint to convey her ideas,

to share kisses and cherries,

even if they're silly things

The hypnotic, almost unresolved atmosphere of the instrumental backing comes from the use of a suspended fourth chord, while other aspects evoke the great names of Americanheartland rock , from Tom Petty (the calm tone of the vocals) to Bruce Springsteen (the drums entering with dry snare hits, as in “Born In The Usa“).

“Sans queue ni tête” (Voulzy on guitars, bass and second vocals) doesn't perhaps boast one of the more interesting lyrics, describing a series of contradictions in human existence in a somewhat disjointed way (moving from romantic relationships to mass meat consumption, from religion to wars), but the music is among the most exhilarating, with an obsessively effective choral refrain, as well as excursions ranging from reggae to blues, from country to jazz (the latter especially in the finale, with sampled horns and a bass solo).

While the atmospheric ballad “Le fil” was co-written with his son Pierre, who would make his own album debut the following year with the project Les Cherche Midi, the acoustic “Le zèbre” (for guitar, double bass and percussion), lent to Jean Poiret's film of the same name, is instead a collaboration with Jean-Claude Petit, renowned soundtrack composer, as well as arranger and session musician.

La title track closes the album with an arrangement downtempo where samples of Mediterranean lutes, programmed drums, layers of orchestral keyboards and dark bass lines move through a suggestive, melancholy atmosphere, able to evoke both the neuroses of urban landscapes and the untouched air of the great African plains, both referenced in the lyrics, whose protagonist is a Sudanese immigrant:

I know well, rue de Belleville,

that nothing is made for me,

but I'm in a beautiful city:

that's already something.

So far from my antelopes,

walking in silence,

walking in a European city,

that's already something.

Oh, and I dream

that Sudan, my country, suddenly rises up.

Oh, to dream is already something.

There's a green plastic bag

hanging from my arm.

In my green bag there's only air,

that's already something.

When I dance as I walk

in these tunics,

passersby smile,

that's already something.

For wanting some beautiful music,

Sudan, my Sudan,

for a democratic melody,

they break your teeth.

Wanting an educated world,

Sudan, my Sudan,

the kind where ideas are exchanged,

they break your teeth.

I'm sitting on rue de Belleville,

in the middle of the crowd,

and there, time, hemophiliac,

flows by

The key change from A minor to C major that occurs at 1'45", briefly upending the atmosphere, is just one more touch of class on a refined, formally flawless record that left a deep mark on French singer-songwriter music, showing how the typical devices of alternative rock and the electronic underground could be absorbed into chart-friendly music without diminishing its innovative scope — if anything, dressing it in renewed complexity. Rounding out the picture are socially engaged lyrics that never lapse into mawkishness and, as far as possible, avoid the banality of the love song.

"C'est déjà ça" remains to this day the biggest hit of Souchon's career: released on October 5, 1993, it reached number 1 on the following February 13, and although it held the top spot for only a week, it stayed on the French charts for two years, spending 45 weeks in the top 10 and racking up 1.4 million copies sold. "Foule sentimentale" also reached number 1 among singles, selling over 200,000 copies.

In 1994 Souchon was named Male Artist of the Year at the "Victoires de la musique", the most important award in the French music industry, while "Foule sentimentale" won Song of the Year. Roughly a decade later, on the occasion of the award's twentieth anniversary, it was also named the best French song released between 1984 and 2004.

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23/08/2024

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition