Tu connais la chanson ?

How about a game of “Who wrote this song?” and, for once, starting with the lyrics? After all, French chanson is a language. Trenet hangs out with the Surrealists, Gainsbourg rattles off verses by Verlaine. Perhaps that’s what defines French chanson: language. Yet it borrows from musical genres the world over. So is it really that French? What if we had fun finding out who wrote this song? Or the author? And “where are the women” in the history of song? If they’re harder to guess, it’s because they’re perhaps less well known. Or less recognized? What if the singer on stage listened to the people in the audience who had come to hear him? To listen to their answers, attentively, with amusement or mockery…