This is the controversy of August 15. Juliette Armanet, one of the singers of the moment, tackled a legend and her main work. Asked in a Belgian media, the successful songwriter attacked Michel Sardou and his masterful “Lacs du Connemara”. When asked what song would make her leave a party, she replies “The Connemara Lakes”.
Juliette Armanet criticizes this story of Irish marriage “a scout, sectarian side” and the music for being “filthy” (it is signed by Jacques Revaux). “It’s on the right, nothing is going right,” she concludes. However, “Les lacs” (1981) is one of Michel Sardou’s most consensual titles (more than a million copies for the album and the single). For Juliette Armanet (and others), here are five songs ranked really right.
The singer’s most controversial song. Reacting to the Patrick Henry affair, assassin of little Philippe Bertrand, Michel Sardou puts on paper a few verses that will ignite the French variety. “You stole my child / shed the blood of my blood […] You killed the child of a love / I want you dead / I am for it.” This last sentence ranks the singer even further to the right and in the pro-death penalty camp. He defends himself, evoking the law of retaliation. Anti-Sardou committees are set up, his concerts are disrupted and the artist comes out wrung out. He calms down for a while, but Sardou’s image remains forever marked by this title… which he has never sung in concert for forty years.
It is often said that when you fall off your horse, you have to get back up quickly. It’s the same with controversies. Two years after the incidents linked to the album La Vieille (which included “Je suis pour”, “J’accuse” and “Le temps de colonies” – a far from right-wing song), Sardou released Je vole, an album with a consensual appearance. In one of the titles, he becomes a demographer and laments that “We, the champions of love, will always remain with only 50 million Gauls.” “Why this under-production in our reproduction when love is the specialty of the Nation?”, he wonders before advocating an offensive family policy to “populate Lozère”.
This is truly Michel Sardou’s only political fight. A true troublemaker from singing in circles, the artist has made Molière’s phrase his own: “Making the world angry is my greatest joy.” But this time it’s serious. To mark his opposition to the will of the Minister of Education Alain Savary to abolish private educational establishments, he recorded the very offensive “The two schools”. He explains that the private and the public have their quality and their defect. “This sacred Republic […]/Elder daughter of the Church and the Convention […] would be very happy if her masters left her/Free to make love and go to mass.”
The singer joins the processions led by the right during the big demonstration which brings together a million people and which will make the government back down. “Whatever our opinions. We make our revolution… In song.
François Mitterrand was very fond of Michel Sardou. But he must have choked on hearing this violent charge against “(his) comrades” socialists. “There is in the air that we breathe / Like a smell, like an uneasiness / All the rats are about to leave / Can’t you see anything from your cliff?
Sardou accompanies the turn of the rigor, the first disillusions of the rose after the drunkenness of May 1981 and the future defeat of 1986. The title does not have the violence of certain songs of the 1970s, but it replaces the artist in the heart of the political ring. Sardou is a right-wing singer! François Mitterrand did not hold it against him: he made him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1985.
The latest controversy of the singer. Michel Sardou writes the lyrics to “Allons danser” when Nicolas Sarkozy launches an assault on the Élysée. The verses seem to come from the program of the UMP candidate. “Wherever you come from, welcome home/Knowing to respect/Those who came long before you”. Or again: “Let’s finally talk about acquired rights / While everything, everything passes here below / We will have to forget some / Under penalty of never having rights again.” So when the lyrics appeared on the last page of Le Parisien, scandal broke. Sardou, Sarkozy, same fight? The singer defends himself with a small smile, very happy with his shot.
If he has not yet reacted to Juliette Armanet’s attack, he could launch the few words of this song as an appeasement: “And then let’s dance to forget all that. Let’s go dancing”