Ces gens là; Singing Your Way to Fluency

Merde! Sacre bleu! Oops, there I go again, me and my foul bilingual mouth.

Guillaume, c'est mon nom et la musique, c'est mon jeu.  Heard any good French songs recently?  Surely there's more under the sun than Edith Piaf.  Sometimes listening to pop songs in the target language is a good way to increase vocabulary and comprehension.  Just as nursery rhymes helped us absorb English as children, the rhyme and beat of a well-composed foreign language tune makes the text more memorable, not to mention more fun to learn.

Once again the problem is ferreting out good representatives of the target language's musical oeuvre.  Not having unlimited reserves for buying CDs on Amazon, I find myself turning once again to that goldmine of media, YouTube.  Ah, what a barren waste was life before YouTube, no?  I wonder how much longer it'll be free.

I have had some results from keywords such as 'chansons populaires' or 'French pop songs.'  But a lot of what comes up are American songs that are popular in France or some sort of French hip-hop or rap that's just not my tasse de thé.  I have found a few Jacques Brel classics that I like and one fairly current hit song called 'Il est le même que moi.'  I've attached links to both of these above.

I don't know about you, but I've never been a big fan of Maurice Chevalier.  There's something too cutesy and unsubstantial about his work.  C'est si bon?  I think not.  I do, however, still very much like Grace Jones' rendition of 'La Vie en Rose.'  Though I know it's sacrilege, I much prefer it to Piaf's more famous version   

Other than that, I haven't been that successful in locating a library of songs that I'd play over and over.  Italian pop songs are nice, but most of the current ones seem a little sappy and treacly.  One does tire of hearing about amore, as lovely as it may be.