“La Vie En Rose” was written in 1945 by Edith Piaf, Louis Guglielmi, and Marguerite Monnot. First, I’ll start off by saying that though I don’t know French, Edit Piaf’s singing gets me. . .right. . .there. While she had a tumultuous life, she could use every experience and emotion she lived through to inject into her music, lyrics wise and vocally. When she sings, you feel it, whether you know the exact words she is singing or not. She wrote the lyrics to some brilliant songs, “La Vie En Rose” being one of the best. And while I can only go off of the translated version, I can’t really offer a more beautiful and enchanting song about love.
Louis Armstrong
My Heart Sighs: I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
I decided to do a series of posts about certain songs that . . . just do something to my insides. I don’t know if I can adequately put into words the feeling I’m given by these songs, but I’m going to do my best. Music is an important part of my life, and can generate such an array of emotions and there are so many musicians and songs that I love. These songs, though, are the ones that make my soul flourish. They cause an internal and beyond reaction, a sensation that makes my heart well-up and about burst. It’s an agreeable feeling, mixed with an ache, but one that I know will be soothed. . .some day. If you reference back to my post, Please Step On My Toes, you’ll get a bit of an understanding of the context of these songs for me. I have a play list of these songs, and I’ll go through them one by one, in no particular order.
First up, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” written by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh in 1928. Like most older songs, there are quite a few covers and versions. The one that gets me right in the essence of my being is from 1947 from Django Reinhardt with Freddie Taylor on vocals. For anyone who may not know Django Reinhardt, he was a French guitarist most prominent in the 1930s and 1940s.
Lovely Shades of Nostalgia 