Charles Trenet

Who was Charles Trenet?

Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet, known as Charles Trenet, was a French singer and songwriter. He was most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s. In an era in which it was unusual for singers to write their own material, Trenet wrote prolifically and declined to record any but his own songs.

His best-known songs include "Boum!", "La Mer", "Y'a d'la joie", "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", "Ménilmontant" and "Douce France". His catalogue of songs is enormous, numbering close to a thousand. While many of his songs mined relatively conventional topics such as love, Paris, and nostalgia for his younger days, what set Trenet's songs apart were their personal, poetic, sometimes quite eccentric qualities, often infused with a warm wit. Some of his songs had unconventional subject matter, with whimsical imagery bordering on the surreal. "Y'a d'la joie" evokes joy through a series of disconnected images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street and a baker making excellent bread.