On Edith Piaf

Thoughts On Edith Piaf

Edith Piaf sounds a bit like a duck-- but a sexy duck who you want to quietly molest while paddling languidly around in the Seine at sunset. She evokes for me the imagery of casual, yet feather-ruffling, Parisian duck love. There is a very romantic, broken quality to her music, which is somehow accentuated by her atypical, nasally duck pipes. The heady euphony of her voice lilts over the traditionally Parisian background of strings and accordions, and seems to dive--unexpectedly yet nonchalantly--into crescendos at Piaf’s volition. Decrescendos come just as effortlessly-- and seemingly at whatever moment Madame Piaf decides, which always ends up being the perfect one. The whole thing is then wrapped in the feeling of a horny love elegy—romantic, erotic, and just so damn sad.
The songs emit an air of characteristically Parisian, exclusive sophistication; but beneath those calm, odorous waters of panache are the feverishly kicking webbed duckfeet of raw, thickly sexual French grit-- from the streets, putain. In an amazing feat of authentic personal expression, Piaf manages beautifully to tell her indelible rags-to-riches, sexy-duck, I-gave-all-the-GIs-in-WWII-boners-over-the-radio, incredible life story in each of her songs. The songs are elegant and beautiful, but they hint that the road to fame and fanciness was not easy. Sadly, the memory which I associate with Piaf songs is not of trysts with pretty French duck women, which would be appropriate. It is parodical. I like to sing disturbingly stereotypical French songs to French people, like an ignorant tourist-- I sing Piaf tunes to them, or even worse: “Le Marseillaise.” I only know the first few lines of Le Marseillaise, so its choice is even more obnoxious because I either repeat the few lines I know ad nauseam or hum the rest of the melody. I also like to do this in a startling and socially uncomfortable operatic tenor. I do this because I like French people (to generalize again), so I suppose it’s strange that I am compelled to offer such an act in representation of admiration and affinity.