A Musical 180

I finally got the dreaded "Studio" out of my mind.



*wild applause and raucous cheers*



On this quiet Sunday, I craved to listen to one of my favorite French singers, Francis Cabrel. When I had a stable source of income, a good portion of my earnings were traded on Amazon.com to purchase various French CDs. I gladly invested in perfecting my pronunciation by singing along to Hélène Ségara, Mylène Farmer, even Pascal Obispo. But Francis Cabrel stuck out among them.



"I come from heaven and the stars among it don't speak of anything but you, from a musician who makes his hands play on a morsel of wood..."




Early in my arrival in Dijon, I overheard one of my room mates listening to her playlist of songs. I instantly recognized "Petite Marie." I got excited. It was the first time I heard his voice in France. It was no longer in my room in my Miami!


"Ah, that's Francis Cabrel," I exclaimed.


"Ben, oui, bien sûr. Who else could you think it was?" To the French, it's obvious who he is.


I also love "Je l'aime à mourir." It's a declaration of a man's unyielding love and admiration for the woman who raises him.


For this man, you can destroy everything that you want; she only needs to open the space of her arms to rebuild it all. She builds bridges between them and heaven; they cross them every time she doesn't want to sleep. She dances in the middle of the forests she paints. She must have fought every war to be as strong as she is today. She must have fought every war of life as well as love's.





(Yes, behold Cabrel in his '70s Jesus glory!)



Barb the French Bean

Disclaimer: neither the videos nor Cabrel's lyrics is mine.

Yeah. It's That Bad.

WARNING: This post features a highly earwormable song. Proceed with extreme caution.

On Tuesday night, I watched the intellectually stimulating America's Got Talent. I never imagined that I would soon come to regret that decision.

One of the auditioners, a rather charming woman named Sponjetta Parrish, claimed to be a songwriter and performed something that she had composed. It turns out that she is not such an exceptional singer, nor that her song, "Studio," has the most profound lyrics; the buzzers inevitably sounded. Yet what I loved about her appearance was how the host, Nick Cannon, came to the rescue and started dancing to the song. The audience that first booed started laughing and dancing, encouraging the poor chanteuse. The judges were still unimpressed, however. But what counted was that Sponjetta was a good sport. That clip has been engraved forever into my brain.




You think that the moment would end there, right?

WRONG.

For the past day, "Studio" has been playing incessantly on repeat in my head. To make matters worse, it's only the line "I'll be in my studio, studio" that has caught on. Every activity that I've done has been punctuated by those words.

EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. THING. I. DO.

Damn it, Howie Mandel. You were right. The song will stay stuck in my head for a very long time, and I hate that.

Lesson learned: I will read more books.

Barb the French Bean

Disclaimer: As the post states, Sponjetta Parrish is responsible for writing this song. (You don't think I wrote THAT, did you???) Oh, and the video isn't mine.