Friday's French music break - Catherine Lara's "Avec le temps"

A new feature and an excuse to share with readers some popular French music - a mixture of proven standards that just about everyone in France knows, covers that add that little extra to what has gone before, and brand spanking new songs from "upcoming artists" as they're usually described.

After all, what better way is there to start the weekend?

Catherine Lara (screenshot from video on official website and OFF TV)

And it's proof, as if anyone really needed it, that the world of popular music has more - much more - to offer than songs sung in English.

Yes of course we all know that, but it's easy to forget when the airwaves are choc-a-bloc of songs influenced by, or sung primarily in, English.

There's nowt wrong with them - far from it. But it's almost as though for many nothing exists outside.

This won't redress the imbalance: it's not really meant to.

But it'll highlight some of what France has had, and continues, to offer.

To get things rolling - a remake. And a rather surprising one at that.

It comes from Catherine Lara, a singer-songwriter whose main success came from hits in the 1980s.

That doesn't mean she has slipped into musical oblivion since - far from it.

Lara has released over 20 studio albums, continued arranging and composing for both television and theatre and appears regularly along with a host of other French singers and performers on the annual charity show Les Restos du coeur.

With her trademark tinted glasses and shock of silver white hair, the 65-year-old has never made any secret of her sexuality and was one of the first artists in France to declare openly that she was a lesbian.

Never far from Lara's side is her violin, an instrument she took up as a child and continued studying right through to her twenties at the conservatoire national de Paris.

Her most recent album, released in March 2011, pays tribute to one of France's most respected singer-songerwriters Léo Ferré, whose songs are among the best known and most often covered in this country.

"Avec le temps" is one such song and even though countless artists have tried to recapture the magic of the original, often with mixed results, Lara adds something...different.



Lara will next be heard by millions in France when she sits alongside TV and radio presenter Laurent Boyer next weekend as a co-commentator for French viewers of that annual "musical" (use the term very lightly) fest the Eurovision Song Contest.

It should be interesting to hear what the 1986 winner of the French equivalent of a Grammy, Le Victoire de la musique, makes of Amaury Vassili - this country's entry - and the other 24 finalists.

For the moment though, sit back and listen to Lara's interpretation of Ferré's "Avec le temps" and enjoy.

Catherine Lara sings "Avec le temps"

Just for a comparison - here's the original