Poupée de cire, poupée de son
| "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Single by France Gall | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released | 1965 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Genre | Yé-yé | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Serge Gainsbourg | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Poupée de cire, poupée de son" (English: wax doll, rag doll) was the winning entry in the Eurovision song contest of 1965. It was performed in French by French singer France Gall, representing Luxembourg.
Composed by Serge Gainsbourg, inspired by the 4th movement (Prestissimo in F minor) from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, it was the first song to win Eurovision that was not a ballad. It was nominated as one of the 14 best Eurovision songs of all time at the Congratulations special held in October 2005.
As is common with Gainsbourg's lyrics, the words are filled with double meanings, wordplay, and puns. The title can be translated as "wax doll, rag doll" (a floppy doll stuffed with bran or chaff) or as "wax doll, sound doll" (with implications that Gall is a "singing doll" controlled by Gainsbourg).
Sylvie Simmons wrote that the song is about "the ironies and incongruities inherent in baby pop"—that "the songs young people turn to for help in their first attempts at discovering what life and love are about are sung by people too young and inexperienced themselves to be of much assistance, and condemned by their celebrity to be unlikely to soon find out."
This sense of being a "singing doll" for Gainsbourg reached a peak when he wrote "Les Sucettes" ("Lollipops") for Gall.
The day after her Eurovision victory the single had sold 16,000 copies in France, four months later it had sold more than 500,000 copies.
The central image of the song is that singer identifies herself as a wax doll (poupée de cire), a rag doll (poupée de son). Her heart is engraved in her songs; she sees life through the bright, rose-tinted glasses of her songs. Is she better or worse than a fashion doll (poupée de salon)?
Her recordings are like a mirror where anyone can see her. Through her recordings, it is as though she has been smashed into a thousand shards of voice and scattered so that she is everywhere at once.
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Wikipedia