Brassens, Georges (1921-81). French singer-song-writer, also poet, novelist. This gruff, shy stage performer, hiding behind a thick southern accent and an even thicker moustache, shocked his early audiences with his explicitly sexual subject-matter and his use of ‘bad language’. He allowed his provocatively comic style (‘La Mauvaise Réputation’, 1952) to mask a craftsman of archaically regular verse, steeped in poetic tradition and capable of making popular songs out of poems by Villon, Aragon, or Hugo. His ‘monotonous’ musical style, using only two acoustic guitars and double bass, mixes traditional French folk-song with influences of jazz and swing from the 1930s and 40s. His early lyrics often evoke a pastoral village community (‘Brave Margot’, 1953); his later songs are usually less idyllic and more philosophical (‘Mourir pour des idées’, 1972). He celebrates friendship (‘Les Copains d'abord’, 1964) and generosity of spirit (‘Chanson pour l'Auvergnat’, 1954). He prefers the traditional submissive virtues of women to their sexual demands or their middle-class pretensions, and refuses to be tied down by conventional values (‘La Non-demande en mariage’, 1966). His early succès de scandale developed into a durable popularity, of which he was mockingly sceptical. He will be remembered for re-infusing into French popular song a sense of its literary heritage, both classical and Rabelaisian; as the best example of the troubadour in the age of the electronic mass media.

— Peter Hawkins

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.