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Poupe de cire, poupe de son
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox song
| name = Poupe de cire, poupe de son
| cover = France Gall - Poupe de cire, poupe de son.jpg
| alt =
| type = single
| artist = France Gall
| album = Poupe de cire, poupe de son
| released = March 1965
| A-side = "Poupe de cire, poupe de son"
"Un prince charmant"
| B-side = "Dis ton capitaine"
"Le cur qui jazze"
| recorded =
| studio = Studio Blanqui
| venue =
| genre = Y-y, French pop
| length = 2:34
| label = Philips Records
| writer = Serge Gainsbourg
| producer = Denis Bourgeois
| prev_title = Sacr Charlemagne
| prev_year = 1964
| next_title = Attends ou va-t-en
| next_year = 1965
| misc =
}}
"'Poupe de cire, poupe de son'" (; English: "Wax doll, rag doll") is a song written by Serge Gainsbourg and recorded by French singer France Gall. It is best known as the Luxembourgian winning entry at the Eurovision Song Contest 1965, held in Naples.
The song was inspired by the 4th movement (Prestissimo in F minor) from Beethoven's 'Piano Sonata No. 1'. It was nominated as one of the 14 best Eurovision songs of all time at the 'Congratulations' special held in October 2005.
As is common with Gainsbourg's lyrics, the words are filled with double meanings, wordplay, and puns. The title can be translated as "wax doll, rag doll" (a floppy doll stuffed with bran or chaff) or as "wax doll, sound doll" (with implications that Gall is a "singing doll" controlled by Gainsbourg).
Sylvie Simmons wrote that the song is about "the ironies and incongruities inherent in baby pop"that "the songs young people turn to for help in their first attempts at discovering what life and love are about are sung by people too young and inexperienced themselves to be of much assistance, and condemned by their celebrity to be unlikely to soon find out."Sylvie Simmons, 'Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes', , page 42
This sense of being a "singing doll" for Gainsbourg reached a peak when he wrote "Les Sucettes" ("Lollipops") for Gall.
The day after her Eurovision victory the single had sold 16,000 copies in France, four months later it had sold more than 500,000 copies.
Summary of the lyrics
The central image of the song is that the singer identifies herself as a wax doll (poupe de cire), a rag doll (poupe de son). Her heart is engraved in her songs; she sees life through the bright, rosetinted glasses of her songs. Is she better or worse than a fashion doll (poupe de salon)?
Her recordings are like a mirror where anyone can see her. Through her recordings, it is as though she has been smashed into a thousand shards of voice and scattered so that she is everywhere at once.
This central image is extended, as she refers to her listeners as rag dolls (poupes de chiffon) who laugh, dance to the music, and allow themselves to be seduced for any reason or no reason at all.
But love is not just in songs, and the singer asks herself what good it is to sing about love when she herself knows nothing about boys.
The two concluding verses seem to refer to Gall herself. In them, she sings that she is nothing but a wax doll, his doll, under the sun of her blond hair. But someday she, the wax doll, will be able to actually live her songs without fearing the warmth of boys.Lyric summary largely based on the English translations of the lyrics [http://www.myownrole.com/poupeedecirepoupeedeson.html by Alex Chabot] and [http://www.diggiloo.net/?1965lu by Morgan Trouillet].
Selfreferentiality, puns, wordplay, and double meanings
Selfreferentiality, puns, word play, and double meanings are integral to Gainsbourg's style of lyric writing. These factors make it difficult for nonFrench speakers to understand the nuances of the lyrics, and even more difficult to translate the lyrics.
Selfreferentiality
At a young age, France Gall was too nave to understand the second meaning of the lyrics. She felt she was used by Gainsbourg throughout this period, most notably after the song "Sucettes", which was literally about lollipops, but with multiple double entendres referring to oral sex.Poupe de son can also mean "doll of sound" or "song doll" France Gall could be said to be the doll through which Gainsbourg channels his sounds.
As Sylvie Simmons wrote in 'Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes':
"Poupe . . . " was catchy, and on the surface pretty annoying perfect Eurovision fodder, in other words but closer examination revealed perspicacious lyrics about the ironies and incongruities inherent in babypop."
In typical Gainsbourg fashion, the song is first of all selfreferential in that it is written for a babypop performer to sing about herselfcomplete with reference to Gall singing beneath her "sun of blond hair" and double meanings clearly tying the song to Gall's own life situation: Singing songs created by adults and carrying themes purposefully introduced by those controlling adults which the young performer only partially understands. Gall herself is the "Poupe de cire, poupe de son" of the song's title.
But the selfreferentiality goes far beyond this. The writing of "Poupe" by Gainsbourg and its performance by Gall is itself an example of this very dynamic at work, and Gainsbourg knew that Gall, at her age, would understand the ramifications of this dynamic only partially, even at the same moment she was performing a song about it. In writing "Poupe," Gainsbourg is purposefully exploiting the very dynamic that is the subject of the song.
It was this extra dimension, in part, that made the song interesting and attractive to audiences, helping catapult it to the top of the Eurovision contest.
It was this same element that made Gainsbourg feel that this portion of his songwriting output was particularly groundbreaking and daring,Sylvie Simmons, 'Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes', , page 44. yet simultaneously made Gall feel profoundly uncomfortable with this material that she was being deliberately manipulated and exploited by the adults around herparticularly in retrospect as she matured.Gilles Verlant, 'Gainsbourg', quoted in Sylvie Simmons, 'Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes', , page 44.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9ajuEVNfb0 The Story behind Les Sucettes]
In later years, Gall dissociated herself from the Eurovision Song Contest, and refused to discuss it in public or perform her winning song.
Poupe de cire, poupe de son
In a literal sense, 'poupe de cire' means "wax doll".'Son' in the context of 'poupe de son' means 'bran' or 'straw', of the kind used to stuff children's floppy dolls .'Dictionnaire de la langue franaise (Littr)': Son: [...] sciure servant remplir des poupes 'Poupe de son' is a longstanding expression in French meaning "doll stuffed with straw or bran". It is also used in the expression 'syndrome du bb "poupe de son"', "floppy baby syndrome" (infantile hypotonia), and can even refer to someone too drunk to stand up.
So in the first place, 'poupe de son' refers to a floppy type of doll like a rag doll, with no backbone of its own but which, like a puppet, is under the control of others.
The double meanings of the two terms 'cire' and 'son' come in because of the subject matter of the lyrics, which contain many references to singing and recording. 'Cire' ('wax') brings to mind the old shellac records, commonly known in France as "wax disks". 'Son' has a second meaning"sound".
These double meanings are amplified in Gainsbourg's lyrics. For instance, the first verse refers to the fact that the singer's heart is engraved in her songs, much in the way the sound vibrations are engraved in a wax recording. A later reference is made to the singer being broken into a thousand pieces of voice, as though she herself is made of sound.
English versions of the lyrics often translate the title as "Wax Doll, Singing Doll",[http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/02/videos_france_g.html WFMU's Beware of the Blog entry for 16 February 2006] accessed 25 June 2007 "The lonely singing doll" (the version sung by Twinkle), or something similar[http://www.myownrole.com/poupeedecirepoupeedeson.html Alex Chabot translation] accessed 25 June 2007translations that are not literally correct but which capture some of the double meaning implicit in the original version.
As Sylvie Simmons summarized the theme of this song: "The songs young people turn to for help in their first attempts at discovering what life and love are about, are sung by people too young and inexperienced to be of much help and condemned by their celebrity to be unlikely to soon find out."
Voir la vie en rose bonbon
"Voir la vie en rose" means "to see life through rosetinted glasses", while "rose bonbon" refers to the lurid pink colouring used in children's sweets.So the entire phrase as found in the lyrics "Je vois la vie en rose bonbon" can be translated as something like, "I see life through pink candycoloured glasses".[http://www.diggiloo.net/?1965lu Diggaloo Thrush website] accessed 25 June 2007
Briser en mille clats de voix
Like "Voir la vie en rose bonbon", "Briser en mille clats de voix" is a combination of two separate phrases, put together to mean something more than either alone."Briser en mille clats" means "to smash to pieces". "clats de voix" means "shouts" or "screams".
Thus "Brise en mille clats de voix" could be translated as "Broken in thousand pieces of voice"[http://www.diggiloo.net/?1965lu Morgan Trouillet translation] accessed 25 June 2007 or "Smashed in a thousand shouts".
Pour un oui, pour un nom
"Celles qui dansent sur mes chansons . . . Elles se laissent sduire pour un oui, pour un nom" translates literally as "Those who dance to my songs . . . They give in to a yes, to a name".However, the phrase "Se laissent sduire pour un oui, pour un nom" sounds like the phrase "Se laisser sduire pour un oui, pour un non" which means literally "to let themselves be seduced for a yes, for a no".
This can more colloquially translated as "to give in to the slightest temptation"[http://www.diggiloo.net/?1965lu Diggaloo Thrush website] accessed 25 June 2007 or "to let themselves be seduced for any reason at all".
As Alex Chabot writes:
The French here, Pour un oui pour un nom, sounds very much like Pour un oui pour un non, which is for a yes for no, or "for any reason at all." In this case, the suggestion is that a name, in the context of a casual introduction, for instance, is sufficient. This is really a very subtle, and clever, play on words.Alex M. Chabot, My Own Role - The Lyrics of Serge Gainsbourg in English, , accessed 19 February 2012.
At Eurovision
The song was performed 16th on the night, following 's Birgit Brel with "For din skyld" and preceding 's Viktor Klimenko with "Aurinko laskee lnteen". At the close of voting, it had received 32 points, placing first in a field of 18.
The French public retrospectively reproached Gall and Gainsbourg for having represented [and won for] Luxembourg and not for their own country.
Two years later Sandie Shaw entered the contest and won with another puppet themed song, "Puppet on a String".
In other languages
Versions of "Poupe de cire, poupe de son" in other languages include:
* ("Doll of wax, and doll of bran")
* ("The big rice cooker"), sung by The Chung Brothers, for the animated movie 'McDull: Rise of the Rice Cooker'
* ("Wax doll"), sung by Eva Pilarov and then by Hana Zagorov
* ("Little doll"), sung by Gitte Hnning
* ("The fashion doll") sung by Marijke Merckens (1965) and 'Was' ("Wax"), sung by Spinvis (2007)
* , sung by Twinkle
* ("Wax doll"), sung by Tiiu Varik; 'Laulev vahanukk' ("Singing wax doll"), sung by Evelin Vigemast
* ("Wax doll, singing doll"), sung by Ritva Palukka
* ("That was a nice party"), sung by France Gall; 'Das Puppenhaus' ("The doll's house"), sung by the Swiss singer Cornelia Grolimund (1995)
* ("Wax Doll") by performed by Mria Toldy
* ("Don't be angry, it's not a disaster") by Haim Hefer, performed by Yarkon Bridge Trio; 'Bubat kash' ("Rag doll"), performed by Gila Edri.
* ("I do, you don't"), sung by France Gall
* ("Dreaming chanson doll"), sung by France Gall; there are also other versions sung by Mieko Hirota, Minami Saori, Fumie Hosokawa and Juju (singer) (October 2015)
* ("The singing wax doll")
* ("Wax doll, doll of sound"), sung by Wanderla (Brazil) and Madalena Iglsias (Portugal)
* ("Wax doll"), sung by Muslim Magomayev
* ("Wax doll"), sung by Oga Szabov
* ("Wax doll"), sung by Karina, Leo Dan and Jun "Corazn" Ramn
* ("I really can't help it, can I?"), sung by Gitte Hnning, AnneLie Ryd and LillBabs
* ("Doll without love"), sung by Ngc Lan; a dance version by M Tm; Performed on Thy Nga's 'Paris By Night 52' by Trc Lam & Trc Linh in 1999 at Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California
Covers
* The Swedish metal band Therion did two versions of the song on their album 'Les Fleurs Du Mal' in 2012. They also made a video clip to one of the versions.
* The Spanish group Parchs used part of the main melody in their song "Corazn de plomo" ("Heart made of lead"), talking about a toy soldier, quite similar to the song of France Gall.
* The Spanish singer Javier Corcobado covered the song on his album 'Fotografiando al corazn', released in 2003.
* Montreal indie rock band Arcade Fire have sung a cover of "Poupe de Cire, poupe de son" throughout their 2007 tour in promotion of their album 'Neon Bible'. They later released a studio version of it on their split 7-inch single with LCD Soundsystem.
* The German band Welle: Erdball covered the song on their album 'Chaos Total' from 2006.
* The Swiss band Hillbilly Moon Explosion covered the song on their album 'By Popular Demand', released in 2005.
* New York City band Les Sans Culottes covered the song on their 2004 album, 'Fixation Orale'.
* Belle and Sebastian performed a live version for the Black Sessions, recorded to video for the 'Fans Only' DVD, released on Jeepster Records.
* Anime series 'Sugar Sugar Rune' uses an altered version of the music in its opening theme.
* The opening theme for the anime series 'Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach', titled "Yumemiru ai tenshi", is both a direct reference to the Japanese version of the song (both start with 'yumemiru') and samples exactly the same chord progression and parts of the melody.
* The German punk band Wizo had a cover of this song on their album 'Herrnhandtasche' released in 1995.
* The Spanish band Nosotrsh performs a cover in their album 'Nadie hablar de...'
* The Spanish band Nena Daconte performed a cover in the TV programme 'Eurovisin 2009, el retorno' which was broadcast at TVE1 on Saturday 21 February 2009.
* The Spanish singer La Terremoto de Alcorcn performed a cover (titled "Mueca de Alcorcn" (meaning "Doll of Alcorcn") in the television programme 'Los mejores aos de nuestra vida. Especial Todos con Soraya a Eurovisin', which was broadcast at TVE1 on 12 May 2009.
* Norwegian band Sterk Naken og Biltyvene (SNoB) did a cover of the Norwegian version "Lille Dukke" on their 1994 album 'Tretten Rde Roser'.
* Belgian singer Kim Kay recorded a dance version in 1998.
* Jenifer did a cover in her 2013 album 'Ma dclaration'. It was the first single from the album charting in SNEP in April and May 2013.[http://lescharts.com/showitem.asp?interpret=Jenifer&titel=Poup%E9e+de+cire+poup%E9e+de+son&cat=s LesCharts.com Jenifer - "Poupe de cire, poupe de son" page]
Chart positions
;By France Gall
;Jenifer version
Kim Kay version
{{Infobox song
| name = Poupe de cire, poupe de son
| cover = Kim Kay - Poupe de cire, poupe de son.jpg
| alt =
| type = single
| artist = Kim Kay
| album = La Vie en lilali
| released =
| recorded = 1998 at Sterman & Cook Studio
| studio =
| venue =
| genre = Eurodance
| length =
| label = EMI
| writer = Serge Gainsbourg
| producer =
| prev_title = Oui oh oui
| prev_year = 1998
| next_title = Bam bam
| next_year = 1999
| misc =
}}
Another version of the song was by the Belgian Eurodance singer Kim Kay. It was released on 13 November 1998 on EMI as the third single and as well as the twelfth track from her debut studio album, 'La Vie en lilali' (1998). It is a Eurodance song that was written by Serge Gainsbourg and produced by Phil Sterman and Lov Cook.
Track listing
Charts
Certifications
References
Sources and external links
* [http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=282 Official Eurovision Song Contest site, history by year, 1965.]
* [http://www.diggiloo.net/?1965lu Detailed info and lyrics, The Diggiloo Thrush, "Poupe de cire, poupe de son".]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110719035954/http://www.myownrole.com/poupeedecirepoupeedeson.html Song lyrics with English translation]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q92nAkHSxbQ&t=1h5m25s Vietnamese Pop version (01:05:25 01:09:50) on Paris By Night 52]
Category:1965 songs
Category:France Gall songs
Category:Kim Kay songs
Category:Songs written by Serge Gainsbourg
Category:Philips Records singles
Category:EMI Records singles
Category:French-language songs
Category:Eurovision songs of 1965
Category:Eurovision songs of Luxembourg
Category:Eurovision Song Contest winning songs
Category:Congratulations Eurovision songs
Category:Number-one singles in Norway
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