Je suis malade
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Je suis malade (translated: “I'm sick”) is a chanson that was first published in 1973 by French chansonnier Serge Lama . Lama wrote the lyrics, the chanson composer Alice Dona wrote the music. The song sings of lovesickness . It was best known for a cover version of Dalida and has since become a French chanson classic that has been interpreted by several artists.
content
The chanson's lyrical self describes how it feels when abandoned by the loved one: it no longer dreams or smokes, has no future or past, and its whole life seems to be extinguished. He feels sick like in his childhood when his mother left him alone with his despair at night. Although the ego expects the loved one again, it does not know when or where. The relationship has been going on for over two years without the lover seeming to mind. The ego is tired of pretending to be cheerful and gets drunk every night. His previous artistic talent has disappeared, he can no longer find songs and words. If the relationship continues like this, it will kill him. The self will die alone while hearing its voice on the radio.
interpretation
Simon Boulerice describes the effect of the chanson:
"C'est une chanson intense, qui exacerbe la peine amoureuse, qui exsude le désespoir. Elle traduit notre état de délabrement lorsqu'on aime à la folie. »
“This is an intense chanson that exaggerates the pain of love, that radiates despair. It translates our state of disruption when one loves to the point of madness. "
Sébastien Ministru calls Je suis malade the Chason drama par excellence. It is the story of a man who lives in the humiliation of finding no more joy in life when the woman he loves is not at his side. If it weren't for the famous chanson Ne me quitte pas by Jacques Brel from 1959, Je suis malade could be at the forefront of the saddest chansons. In contrast to Ne me quitte pas , however, it is not a chanson of separation, not a closed story in the past, but a story in the present that tells of an ongoing process of coming and going. For him, maintaining happiness speaks for the story of adultery, which goes back to Lama's true life story.
At the same time, however, Ministru discovers a second level behind a man's relationship with his lover, which tells of an angry reckoning between a son and his mother, whom he accuses of leaving him alone until he felt like an orphan. Serge Lama's father was originally an opera singer, but at the insistence of his wife gave up his artistic ambitions in order to take a job and support his family. Against this background, the passages from the loss of artistic potency at the end of the chanson for Ministru can be transferred to the life story of the father, who was robbed of his songs and words by a woman. In the name of the castrated father, the son now kills the mother.
history
According to various sources, Je suis malade was created in 1971 or in spring 1972 in a collaboration between Serge Lama and Alice Dona. The two chanson authors have been working together since 1971, when Lama represented France with the Chanson Un jardin sur la terre at the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson . A close friendship developed between the two artists, so that they often talked about their private life in their joint work sessions. At this time Lama had just left his wife Daisy Brun and was in a relationship with his future second wife Michèle Annie Potier, who was very stressful for the chansonist because of Michèle's frequent job-related absences. It broke out to Dona: “Je n'en peux plus de cette histoire, j'en suis malade, ça me rend malade!” (Translated: “I can't stand this story anymore, I'm fed up with it, it makes me sick! ")
A few hours after the conversation, the words Dona inspired the first notes of the chanson. From her memory, it only took her 15 minutes to write all of the music. It came to her all by itself, so easily that she was almost ashamed of it. In her memoir she found the expression: "La mélodie m'a été soufflée par les Anges". (Translated: "The melody was whispered to me by the angels.") Two months later, when Lama returned from a long summer tour, she played the song for him on the piano for the first time. Lama was immediately taken with the chanson and wrote the lyrics to it. He too is said to have only needed two hours for the text.
Lama's record company Philips was not very enthusiastic about the chanson. Those responsible were of the opinion that a word like "sick" in the title of a chanson was completely unsuitable for commercial success because it aroused negative emotions and associations with ether , pharmacy, diet and thermometers in the general public . Lama put the chanson on his next LP, which was released in January 1973, but Les P'tites Femmes de Pigalle was released as a single , which became a great success.
Lama owed the success of Je suis malade not least to Dalida , who interpreted the song in his own words like no one else. For Dalida, the chanson had a very special personal touch, as after the early death of her father she was often heard from her mother at night had been left alone without knowing when she will return. Dalida's environment advised her against interpreting such a tragic chanson, but she published it in 1973 as the B-side of a single and celebrated successes in particular at a moving performance at the Paris Olympia in early 1974 . In 2007 Lama recorded a virtual duet on his album Pluri (elles) with Dalida, who had died in 1987.
Over the years Je suis malade has become a classic of French chanson, sung by numerous well-known performers. Cover versions are by Ornella Vanoni (1973), Mireille Mathieu (1975), Lara Fabian (1994), Richard Anthony (1996), Thierry Amiel (2003), Tereza Kesovija (2008) and Alice Dona and Jean-Félix Lalanne (2013 ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ See for example the translation in Je Suis Malade - Lyric Translation .
- ↑ Chantons avec Simon: Je suis malade, de Serge Lama at ICI Radio-Canada Première on January 22, 2019.
- ↑ a b “Je suis malade” de Serge Lama, une chanson très intime qui raconte une histoire vraie… on RTBF on April 27, 2017.
- ↑ a b c Pierre Wuthrich: Alice Dona, la mère d'un hymne . In: Migros Magazine from October 15, 2012.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Fabien Lecoeuvre: Je suis malade . In: Le petit Lecoeuvre illustré . Editions du Rocher, Monaco 2015, ISBN 2-268-08052-8 , without pages.
- ↑ a b Didier Janeault: Camion Blanc. Dicorock Reprises, cover versions et plagiats . Camion Blanc, Rosières-en-Haye 2017, ISBN 978-2-35779-929-5 , pp. 132-133.
- ↑ Serge Lama on Dalida's official website .