"Requiem pour un fou" (French pronunciation:[ʁekɥijɛmpuʁɛ̃fu]) is a song by French singer Johnny Hallyday. It was released in February 1976 as the lead single off of his twenty-first studio album, "Derrière l'amour", released later that year in June. Hallyday has also re-recorded the song in Italian, Spanish, and English (with American singer Michael Bolton, English and Bilingual) and has also released duet versions with Bolton and Belgian-Italian singer Lara Fabian in 1996 and 1999 respectively, the ladder duet being a live performance at the Stade de France in September 1998.
History
Gilles Thibaut wrote the lyrics for this blues rock requiem on the theme of the love story, romantic drama and extreme tragedy of a “fanatic suicidal madman of love” who is abandoned by the woman he loves and, crazy for love and pain, kills her so as not to lose her; condemned to death for this feminicide, he in turn lets himself die out of love for her, “for a great love to always live it must die of love.[2] About this socially very provocative and controversial title, which embodies the rocker soul of Johnny Hallyday, Jean-François Brieu considers that through its theme it is an “anti-Hallyday song par excellence” which had everything going for it. confuse the singer's audience, but who, through the grandiloquence of his interpretation, overcomes any reluctance and ultimately ignites the audience.[3] This title is a variation of the song "Requiem pour un con" by Serge Gainsbourg, theme music for the film Le Pacha (1968) by Georges Lautner, with Jean Gabin.
Commercial performance
The song spent four consecutive weeks at no. 1 on the singles sales chart in France (from 4 to 31 March 1976).[4]
^Thoury, Jean-William (2002). Johnny en chanson - Dictionnaire des chansons de Johnny Hallyday [Johnny in song - Dictionary of Johnny Hallyday songs] (in French). France: Editions La Mascara. p. 277.
^Brieu, Jean-François (2000). booklet of the CD Derrière l'amour, 2000 edition (in French). pp. 549984–2, p. 4, "Requiem pour un fou anti-Hallyday song par excellence, vocal song, anti–rock, anti–America, anti-Johnny fan. And yet, [...], there was, there has always been an audience for this theme which roars, which bubbles, which is carried towards the heights of the hit parade by its very excesses, by its grandiloquence which ends up sweeping away reluctance, like a cyclone." (translated).
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