I am a great admirer of Carla Bruni and her songs. I like the very personal poetry in her lyrics and I like her music.
My English version is meant to help me fully enjoy the French as I watch and listen to a very charming and gifted lady.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click on a song title in the following index to access your selected song.
INDEX OF SONGS IN ORDER OF POSTING
1)Quelqu'un m'a dit
2) Peche d'envie
3)Chanson triste
4) Fernande (Brassens)
5) L'Amoureuse
6) La derniere minute
7) Le plus beau du quartier
8) Le temps perdu
9) Raphael
10) Tout le monde
11) L'Excessive
Carla Bruni’s songs with English translation and vice versa
My English version is meant to help me fully enjoy the French as I watch and listen to a very charming and gifted lady.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX OF CARLA BRUNI SONGS IN ORDER OF ALBUMS
Click on a song title in the following index to access your selected song.
Album One: Quelqu'un M'a Dit (2003)
With the help of Louis Bertignac, friend and former member of the group Téléphone, Carla Bruni wrote and composed all twelve songs in “Quelqu’un m’a dit”, which came out in 2003.
1 Quelqu'unm'a dit -
2 Raphael -
Carla Bruni tells of her passionate love for Raphael, the philosophy professor and media personality, with whom she formed a relationship in 2001.
Carla Bruni tells of her passionate love for Raphael, the philosophy professor and media personality, with whom she formed a relationship in 2001.
3 Tout le monde - The crass indifference of those who are happy to let even the most cherished memories die.
4 La Noyee - This is a cover version of a song by the famous French singer and poet Serge Gainsbourg. His influence creates a darker and more pessimistic picture of the human condition.
5 Le Toi du Moi - One can imagine that this is a traditional game that lovers might play, in which they are trying to prove how they perfectly complement each other
6 Le ciel dans une chambre - Carla Bruni sings of the magical transformation of her bedroom when she is in the arms of her lover.
7 J'En Connais – She reflects defiantly on all the many men in her life
.
8 Le plus beau du quartier - A satirical portrait of a paragon of fashion, whose bisexuality permitted him a universal pasture for his vanities.
9 Chanson triste - A short song at the end of a love that failed but does not deserve to be forgotten.
10 L'Excessive - Carla Bruni introduces her song by saying "Cest une chanson de quelqu'un qui aime beaucoup les exces. Mmmmm Mmmmm!"
11 L'Amour - Carla Bruni and her musical collaborator, Louis Bertignac, present a song in the style of American Blues.
12 La dernière minute - Carla hopes that at the end of her tumultuous, chaotic life, she will be allowed one brief moment to pay her last respects to it all it has meant to her - just one minute.
Album Two: No Promises (2007)
It was not until January 2007 that Carla Bruni’s second album, entitled “No Promises” finally came out. Once more accompanied by Louis Bertignac, Carla chose to set to music texts from British and American poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Yeats, Auden, Emily Dickinson and many others. She moved away from the style that made her first album such a success, by singing in English.
6) "Autumn" - Walter de la Mare
8) "I went to Heaven" - Emily Dickinson
9) "Afternoon" - Dorothy Parker - Looking forward uncertainly to old age
10) "Ballade at Thirty-Five" - Dorothy Parker - a young woman's defiance at a difficult time
11) "At last the secret is out" - W. H. Auden
Album Three:- Comme si de rien n'était" (2008)
Having decided to combine her position as France's First Lady with her ongoing singing career, she released her third album on 11 July 2008. The title: "Comme si de rien n'était" was that of a photographic work by her brother, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi, who had died in 2006. The release of "Comme si de rien n'était", a year after her husband had been elected President in May 2007, caused great excitement in the international media and journalists and commentators were unable to decide whether to discuss the album from the point of view of music or of politics.
1) "Ma Jeunesse” - As her youth is coming to an end, Carla Bruni looks back on the mixed up, tumultuous years and her main thought is regret at the time she has wasted as this period has sped by
|
2) "La Possibilité d'une Île” - This is an adaptation of a poem by Michel Houellebecq which she finds as romantic, and as beautiful as verses of Baudelaire.
|
3) "L'Amoureuse “ - The exhilaration of the intoxicating, sensuous enhancements that the world assumes when a woman falls in love.
|
4) "Tu es ma came “ - Carla Bruni is saying that her love for her boyfriend exhilarates her as if she had taken a drug.
5) "Salut Marin” - These are words of farewell to Carla’s elder brother, Virginio Tedescki, who died in 2006, at the age of 46. He had been a fanatic for solo yacht expeditions.
|
6) "Ta tienne “ - Having had so many lovers, she now offers herself to to belong completely to just one
|
7) "Péché d'envie»- In each cryptic line Carla gives suggestions of things she has done, her enjoyments and her trials, her ecstasies and disappointments, loving and fighting, behaving sweetly and not so sweetly
|
8) "You Belong to Me" - Carla sings with feeling the American hit song of the 1950s
Not yet translated
9) Le temps perdu - Carla Bruni is proposing to some lucky man that he should take a break from all the useful things he is doing and waste some time having a cuddle with her.
10) "Je suis une enfant» - In a sweet, simple song, she tells how a loving childhood creates a shell in which each individual child can survive regardless of age.
|
11) "Déranger Les Pierres” - Carla Bruni tells us that she based this song on the music, which Julien Clerc gave her. She finds that it makes a very big difference.
|
12) "L'antilope” –
Carla Bruni’s painful awareness of the strains of her celebrity lifestyle, with the sometimes excruciating mistakes of your past, paraded for evermore by the media and with speculation about your future fall from grace its delight. The only way to cope is to focus narrowly on the present.
|
13) "Notre Grand Amour Est Mort” -
|
After all their wild romance, one day her lover came and told it was not working for him and their great love was over.-
Album Four:- 2013: "Little French Songs"
As early as 2010, there had been rumours that Bruni was preparing a fourth album and this appeared in April 2013 …… "Little French Songs
1) "J'arrive à toi "
After her marriage to Sarkozy she wrote this personal song of love coming back into her life and of all the many things that were wrong before.
2) " Mon Raymond "
Carla Bruni provides us with an insightful and novel character sketch of her husband and reveals her deep admiration for him. “Raymond” stands for “Nicholas”!
3) "Priere "
For some moments, alone each night, she speaks aloud to someone or something beyond herself, in the vastness of infinity. From this she is able to gain real consolation and hope.
4) "Pas Une Dame"
She says why she does not see herself as a lady (and her evidence has already been voiced in other songs). She is still the unruly, unfeminine child she once was.
5) "Dolce Francia"
This song is Carla’s own Italian version of “Douce France”, one of the most famous songs of Charles Trenet. (1913 – 2001).
6) "Chez Keith et Anita" This song expresses nostalgia for the 1970's. Looking at photos of the period, Carla imagines herself present in the company of the Rolling Stones, when they were recording the album, "Exile on main street", in the South of France.
7) "Darling"
Carla talks with total frankness about the painful loss of a close personal friend - François Baudot (1950- 2010). In tribute to him, she produces this sad and melodious song.
8) "La Valse Posthume"
Carla Bruni puts words to the beautiful music of Chopin’s Valse Posthume”. The three time of the waltz becomes symbolic of the three stages of her life.
9) "La Blonde Exquise"
In her struggle to give up smoking, the thoughts of her favourite cigarette (with tabac blond) persist in harassing her.
10) "Liberte"
Carla Bruni’s lament about the progressive erosion of our personal freedoms in the modern mass society and her desperate hope that personal liberty can yet survive.
11) "Little French Song "
In this nice simple song , mainly in English, Carla enjoys herself rhyming English words and French.
12) "Lune - Carla spends her nocturnal moments of lone reflection under a full moon.
13) "Le Pingouin" The identity of the person satirised in this song is not revealed, but as soon as the song appeared the majority of the media was convinced that her words were directed against the man who had replaced her husband, Nicholas Sarkozy, as President of France, François Hollande.
OTHER RECORDINGS OF CARLA BRUNI (0UTSIDE HER OWN ALBUMS)
1) Nobody knows you when you're down and out. (Traditional American Blues)
2) And I love her. (Beatles song) -Carla in duet with Harry Connick Jnr.)
3) Those little things and Ces petits riens
5) Make You Feel My Love (Song by Bob Dylan)
6) Fernande (Song by Georges Brassens)- Although advised against this song, previously banned on French radio, Carla performs Brassens’ study of the inconsistent sexual consolations available to men when they are in situations deprived of women.
TALKING ABOUT CARLA AND HER SONGS
I am compiling some biographical notes on the following link:- Biographical detail to serve as background information.
INDEX OF SONGS IN ORDER OF POSTING
1)Quelqu'un m'a dit
2) Peche d'envie
3)Chanson triste
4) Fernande (Brassens)
5) L'Amoureuse
6) La derniere minute
7) Le plus beau du quartier
8) Le temps perdu
9) Raphael
10) Tout le monde
11) L'Excessive
12) L'Amour
15) Ma Jeunesse
17) Salut Marin
19) Le Toi du Moi
20) Tu es ma came
22) La Noyée
23) Notre Grand Amour est Mort
24) Biographical Details
25) Mon Raymond
26) J'arrive à toi
27) Prière
28) Le Pingouin
29) Little French song
30) Dolce Francia
31) Liberté
32) Darling
33) La Valse Posthume
34) Pas Une Dame
35 At last the secret is out (W H Auden)
36 Lady weeping at the crossroads (W.H.Auden)
37) Promises like piecrust (Christina Rossetti)
38) Absolute Beginners - The David Bowie song
39) Before The World Was Made (Poem by W.B. Yeats)
40) Those dancing days are gone (Poem by W. B. Yeats)
41) If you were coming in the fall (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
42) I felt my life with both my hands (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
43) I went to heaven (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
44) Nobody knows you when you're down and out (American Blues song)
45) And I love her - Beatles song - Duet with Harry Connick Jnr
23) Notre Grand Amour est Mort
24) Biographical Details
25) Mon Raymond
26) J'arrive à toi
27) Prière
28) Le Pingouin
29) Little French song
30) Dolce Francia
31) Liberté
32) Darling
33) La Valse Posthume
34) Pas Une Dame
35 At last the secret is out (W H Auden)
36 Lady weeping at the crossroads (W.H.Auden)
37) Promises like piecrust (Christina Rossetti)
38) Absolute Beginners - The David Bowie song
39) Before The World Was Made (Poem by W.B. Yeats)
40) Those dancing days are gone (Poem by W. B. Yeats)
41) If you were coming in the fall (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
42) I felt my life with both my hands (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
43) I went to heaven (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
44) Nobody knows you when you're down and out (American Blues song)
45) And I love her - Beatles song - Duet with Harry Connick Jnr
46) Those little things - and Ces petits riens by Gainsbourg
47) Lune - At a distressing time, Carla finds solace in lone contemplation under a full moon
48) Make you feel my love - Carla sings Bob Dylan
49) Autumn - the poem of the English poet, Walter De La Mare
50) La blonde exquise Her reluctant fight against a long-term addiction
47) Lune - At a distressing time, Carla finds solace in lone contemplation under a full moon
48) Make you feel my love - Carla sings Bob Dylan
49) Autumn - the poem of the English poet, Walter De La Mare
50) La blonde exquise Her reluctant fight against a long-term addiction
Carla Bruni’s songs with English translation and vice versa
I am a great admirer of Carla Bruni and her songs. I like the very personal poetry in her lyrics and I like her music.
My English version is meant to help me fully enjoy the French as I watch and listen to a very charming and gifted lady.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX OF CARLA BRUNI SONGS IN ORDER OF ALBUMS
Click on a song title in the following index to access your selected song.
Album One: Quelqu'un M'a Dit
(2003)
With
the help of Louis Bertignac, friend and former member of the group Téléphone,
Carla Bruni wrote and composed all twelve songs in “Quelqu’un m’a dit”, which
came out in 2003.
1 Quelqu'unm'a dit - When a treasured
relationship is breaking up, one clings for a time to vague hopes that are as
valid as rumours.
2 Raphael - Carla
Bruni tells of her passionate love for Raphael, the philosophy professor and
media personality, with whom she formed a relationship in 2001.
3 Tout le monde - The crass indifference of those who are
happy to let even the most cherished memories die.
4 La Noyee - This is a cover version of a song by the famous
French singer and poet Serge Gainsbourg. His influence creates a darker and
more pessimistic picture of the human condition.
5 Le Toi du Moi - One can imagine that this is a traditional game
that lovers might play, in which they are trying to prove how they
perfectly complement each other
6 Le ciel dans unechambre - Carla Bruni sings of the
magical transformation of her bedroom when she is in the arms of her lover.
7 J'En Connais – She reflects defiantly on all the many men
in her life
.
8 Le plus beau du quartier - A
satirical portrait of a paragon of fashion, whose bisexuality permitted him a
universal pasture for his vanities.
9 Chanson triste - A
short song at the end of a love that failed but does not deserve to be
forgotten.
10 L'Excessive - Carla Bruni introduces her
song by saying "Cest une chanson de quelqu'un qui aime beaucoup les
exces. Mmmmm Mmmmm!"
11 L'Amour - Carla
Bruni and her musical collaborator, Louis Bertignac, present a song in the
style of American Blues.
12 La dernière minute - Carla
hopes that at the end of her tumultuous, chaotic life, she will be allowed one
brief moment to pay her last respects to it all it has meant to her - just one
minute.
Album
Two: No Promises (2007)
It
was not until January 2007 that Carla Bruni’s second album, entitled “No
Promises” finally came out. Once more accompanied by Louis Bertignac, Carla
chose to set to music texts from British and American poets of the 19th and
20th centuries, including Yeats, Auden, Emily Dickinson and many others. She
moved away from the style that made her first album such a success, by singing
in English.
Album Three:- Comme si de rien
n'était" (2008)
Having decided to combine her
position as France's First Lady with her ongoing singing career, she released
her third album on 11 July 2008. The title: "Comme si de rien
n'était" was that of a photographic work by her brother, Virginio
Bruni Tedeschi, who had died in 2006. The release of "Comme si de rien
n'était", a year after her husband had been elected President in May 2007,
caused great excitement in the international media and journalists and
commentators were unable to decide whether to discuss the album from the point
of view of music or of politics.
1) "Ma Jeunesse” - As her youth is coming
to an end, Carla Bruni looks back on the mixed up, tumultuous years and her
main thought is regret at the time she has wasted as this period has
sped by
|
2) "La Possibilité d'une Île” - This is an adaptation of a
poem by Michel Houellebecq which she finds as romantic, and as
beautiful as verses of Baudelaire.
|
3) "L'Amoureuse “ - The exhilaration of the intoxicating, sensuous enhancements
that the world assumes when a woman falls in love.
|
4) "Tu es ma came “ - Carla Bruni is saying that her love for her boyfriend
exhilarates her as if she had taken a drug.
5) "Salut Marin” - These are words of farewell to Carla’s elder brother, Virginio
Tedescki, who died in 2006, at the age of 46. He had been a fanatic for solo
yacht expeditions.
|
6) "Ta tienne “ - Having had
so many lovers, she now offers herself to to belong completely to just one
|
7) "Péché d'envie»- In each cryptic line Carla gives suggestions of things she has
done, her enjoyments and her trials, her ecstasies and disappointments,
loving and fighting, behaving sweetly and not so sweetly
|
|
Not yet translated
9) Le temps perdu - Carla
Bruni is proposing to some lucky man that he should take a break from all the
useful things he is doing and waste some time having a cuddle with her.
10) "Je suis une enfant» - In a sweet, simple song, she
tells how a loving childhood creates a shell in which each individual child
can survive regardless of age.
|
11) "Déranger Les Pierres” - Carla
Bruni tells us that she based this song on the music, which Julien Clerc gave
her. She finds that it makes a very big difference.
|
|
Carla Bruni’s painful
awareness of the strains of her celebrity lifestyle, with the sometimes
excruciating mistakes of your past, paraded for evermore by the media and
with speculation about your future fall from grace its delight. The
only way to cope is to focus narrowly on the present.
|
After all their wild romance, one day
her lover came and told it was not working for him and their great love
was over.-
Album Four:- 2013:
"Little French Songs"
As
early as 2010, there had been rumours that Bruni was preparing a fourth album
and this appeared in April 2013 …… "Little French Songs
After her marriage to Sarkozy she wrote
this personal song of love coming back into her life and of all the many things
that were wrong before.
Carla Bruni provides us with
an insightful and novel character sketch of her husband and
reveals her deep admiration for him. “Raymond” stands for “Nicholas”!
For some moments, alone each night, she
speaks aloud to someone or something beyond herself, in the vastness of
infinity. From this she is able to gain real consolation and hope.
She says why she does not see herself
as a lady (and her evidence has already been voiced in other songs). She
is still the unruly, unfeminine child she once was.
This song is Carla’s own Italian
version of “Douce France”, one of the most famous songs of Charles Trenet.
(1913 – 2001).
6) "Chez Keith et Anita" This song expresses nostalgia
for the 1970's. Looking at photos of the period, Carla imagines
herself present in the company of the Rolling Stones, when they were recording
the album, "Exile on main street", in the South of France.
Carla talks with total frankness about
the painful loss of a close personal friend - François Baudot (1950- 2010). In
tribute to him, she produces this sad and melodious song.
Carla Bruni puts words to the beautiful
music of Chopin’s Valse Posthume”. The three time of the waltz becomes symbolic
of the three stages of her life.
In her struggle to give up smoking, the
thoughts of her favourite cigarette (with tabac blond) persist in harassing
her.
Carla Bruni’s lament about the
progressive erosion of our personal freedoms in the modern mass society and her
desperate hope that personal liberty can yet survive.
In this nice simple song , mainly in
English, Carla enjoys herself rhyming English words and French.
13) "Le Pingouin"
The identity of the person satirised in this song is not revealed,
but as soon as the song appeared the majority of the media was convinced that
her words were directed against the man who had replaced her
husband, Nicholas Sarkozy, as President of France, François Hollande.
OTHER SONGS OF CARLA BRUNI
6) Fernande (Song by Georges
Brassens)- Although advised against this song, previously banned on French
radio, Carla performs Brassens’ study of the inconsistent sexual consolations
available to men when they are in situations deprived of women.
TALKING ABOUT CARLA AND HER SONGS
I am compiling some biographical notes
on the following link:- Biographical detail to serve as background
information.
INDEX OF SONGS IN ORDER OF POSTING
1)Quelqu'un m'a dit
2) Peche d'envie
3)Chanson triste
4) Fernande (Brassens)
5) L'Amoureuse
6) La derniere minute
7) Le plus beau du quartier
8) Le temps perdu
9) Raphael
10) Tout le monde
11) L'Excessive
12) L'Amour
19) Le Toi du Moi
22) La Noyée
23) Notre Grand Amour est Mort
24) Biographical Details
25) Mon Raymond
26) J'arrive à toi
27) Prière
28) Le Pingouin
29) Little French song
30) Dolce Francia
31) Liberté
32) Darling
33) La Valse Posthume
34) Pas Une Dame
35 At last the secret is out (W H Auden)
36 Lady weeping at the crossroads (W.H.Auden)
37) Promises like piecrust (Christina Rossetti)
38) Absolute Beginners - The David Bowie song
39) Before The World Was Made (Poem by W.B. Yeats)
40) Those dancing days are gone (Poem by W. B. Yeats)
41) If you were coming in the fall (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
42) I felt my life with both my hands (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
43) I went to heaven (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
44) Nobody knows you when you're down and out (American Blues song)
45) And I love her - Beatles song - Duet with Harry Connick Jnr
23) Notre Grand Amour est Mort
24) Biographical Details
25) Mon Raymond
26) J'arrive à toi
27) Prière
28) Le Pingouin
29) Little French song
30) Dolce Francia
31) Liberté
32) Darling
33) La Valse Posthume
34) Pas Une Dame
35 At last the secret is out (W H Auden)
36 Lady weeping at the crossroads (W.H.Auden)
37) Promises like piecrust (Christina Rossetti)
38) Absolute Beginners - The David Bowie song
39) Before The World Was Made (Poem by W.B. Yeats)
40) Those dancing days are gone (Poem by W. B. Yeats)
41) If you were coming in the fall (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
42) I felt my life with both my hands (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
43) I went to heaven (Poem by Emily Dickinson)
44) Nobody knows you when you're down and out (American Blues song)
45) And I love her - Beatles song - Duet with Harry Connick Jnr
46) Those little things - and Ces petits riens by Gainsbourg
47) Lune - At a distressing time, Carla finds solace in lone contemplation under a full moon
48) Make you feel my love - Carla sings Bob Dylan
49) Autumn - the poem of the English poet, Walter De La Mare
50) La blonde exquise Her reluctant fight against a long-term addiction
47) Lune - At a distressing time, Carla finds solace in lone contemplation under a full moon
48) Make you feel my love - Carla sings Bob Dylan
49) Autumn - the poem of the English poet, Walter De La Mare
50) La blonde exquise Her reluctant fight against a long-term addiction
Posted by David
Yendley at 23:49 
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hoang Kien said...
hello,I
just want to say that I love your blog.I myself is a carla bruni's
fan.Unfortunately i dont speak french as you do.I have to search for
translations of her song online and most of them are very dull,then i found
your blog!!!yahnk you for providing such beautiful translation and deep insight
into Madame Sarkozy's lyrics and personal life.There seem to be 2 other songs
of her:Lune and La Blonde Exquise that i can't find translation anywhere.My
life will be complete if you could translate those 2 songs :)))anyway thanks
again for all your hardwork,really aprreciated it(and sorry for my english XD )
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