Charles Trenet

Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet in concert, Delorimier Stadium, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, July 24, 1946.
Background information
Birth name	Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet
Born	(1913-05-18)18 May 1913 Narbonne, Aude, France
Died	19 February 2001(2001-02-19) (aged 87) Créteil, France
Genres	Jazz, easy listening
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1933–2000

Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet, known as Charles Trenet (French: [ʃaʁl tʁəne]; 18 May 1913 – 19 February 2001), was a French singer and songwriter. He was most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s. In an era in which it was unusual for singers to write their own material, Trenet wrote prolifically and declined to record any but his own songs.

Trenet's best-known songs include "Boum!", "La Mer", "Y'a d'la joie", "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", "Ménilmontant" and "Douce France". His catalogue of songs is enormous, numbering close to a thousand. While many of his songs mined relatively conventional topics such as love, Paris, and nostalgia for his younger days, what set Trenet's songs apart were their personal, poetic, sometimes quite eccentric qualities, often infused with a warm wit.

Some of his songs had unconventional subject matter, with whimsical imagery bordering on the surreal. "Y'a d'la joie" evokes joy through a series of disconnected images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street and a baker making excellent bread. The lovers engaged in a minuet in "Polka du Roi" reveal themselves at length to be "no longer human": they are made of wax and trapped in the Musée Grévin. Many of his hits from the 1930s and 1940s effectively combine the melodic and verbal nuances of French song with American swing rhythms.

His song "La Mer", which according to legend he composed with Léo Chauliac on a train in 1943, was recorded in 1946. Trenet explained in an interview that he was told that "La Mer" was not swing enough to be a hit, and for this reason it sat in a drawer for three years before being recorded. "La Mer" is Trenet's best-known work outside the French-speaking world, with more than 400 recorded versions. The song was given unrelated English words and under the title "Beyond the Sea" (or sometimes "Sailing"), was a hit for Bobby Darin in the early 1960s, and George Benson in the mid-1980s. "Beyond the Sea" was used in the ending credits of Finding Nemo. His "Formidable" was written as impressions of a trip to America.