A classic French song from 1967, “Comme d’habitude” was written by Jacques Revaux. I was unable to find any information about the original lyrics or very much information about the original recording by Herve Vilard, whatever this earlier version was, it was technically not “Comme d’habitude” yet. The first released version of “Comme d’habitude” was performed by Claude Francois, but whatever the original lyrics were, Francois wanted to change them to be about a relationship becoming stale through routine. This change was apparently motived by Francois recent breakup with fellow French singer France Gall. We must assume this had a significant impact on Francois since he wanted to immortalize it in song.
If you are familiar with “Comme d’habitude” then already know some of most of what happens next. This song blows up. It becomes internationally famous and is covered hundreds of times.
I briefly mentioned my improving French in the last review. After a few months of Duolingo, I thought I would listen to some French music and see if I could pick out anything that I could understand. I could understand a word here and there, and a lot of the song titles I could decipher without assistance. When Mireille Mathieu’s cover of “Comme d’habitude” auto played, I looked at that title and for the first time listening to this classic tune, I knew what it meant, “as usual.” As I listened, I found that I knew most of the words. I struggled gluing lines together, but I understood a lot of what I was hearing.
This invoked me to try to translate the entire song without assistance. My ability to read and write French has been advancing faster than my ability to hear and speak, so with the lyrics laid before me I worked through them as best I could. About 70% I managed to translate. What this means to two-fold, I have clearly learned a lot, but perhaps more so “Comme d’habitude” is a very simple song lyrically.
My anecdote may not be all that interesting to whoever is reading this, but this was all very exciting for me.
Routine is a good description of the scenario being told and the structure of the lyrics. Short simple sentences describing mundane everyday actions like “I get up,” “I leave the room,” and “alone I drink my coffee,” bookended with the reoccurring title line “comme d’habitude” or “as usual.”
Perhaps it is the simple structure of this song that made it easy to modification.
By far the most famous version of this song in the English-speaking world is Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Two years after the release of Revaux’s “Comme d’habitude” Paul Anka completely rewrote the lyrics in English with a completely different narrative, mood, and theme. Anka’s intention was to have this new version preformed by Frank Sinatra.
Everyone knows “My Way” by Frank Sinatra, but I do not think many English first language people are aware of just how many different versions there are. Before Paul Anka created “My Way,” there were already Croatian and Portuguese versions of “Comme d’habitude.”
This website has an impressive listing of all versions: https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/4249
Amongst all the many, many covers, of both “Comme d’habtiude” and “My Way,” I also found versions in Italian, Dutch, Danish and Czech. I assume there are other language versions, but I only have so much time to listen to covers of the same song.
When I started translating “Comme d’habitude” for some educational fun, I did not plan on researching the history of this song. But discovering just how different the lyrics were from “My Way” my curiosity was stirred. When I started discovering the many different versions of the song, I was stunned. The celebrity of “Comme d’habitude” was a greater international phenomenon then I could reasonably have guessed. There is no mystery to me why this song is so popular, it is a very good song, French, English, or other, and it is simple is design so it is very easy to digest even on a first listen.
Lastly, I enjoy the irony of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way,” and how most of us, myself included, have always taken this to be a proud song of how Sinatra lived his life by his own accord and did things how he wanted too. I think it is fair to give Sinatra such credit for a lot, and I strongly suspect to the idea that Sinatra did things his way, but not in the moment when he is singing “My Way.” He did not write this song. He did not write the lyrics. He did not even write the English lyrics. At best Sinatra should be given the fourth most credit is the creation of this song. It is not his, and therefore, not “his way.”
I think that is funny anyway.
Until next month, keep on rocking in the free world.
- King of Braves
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