The Singles Jukebox

After a long career, a #1 chart single and a… erm, not quite #1 Jukebox single…

[Video][Website]
[3.33]

Jonathan Bogart: So no one told you life was gonna be this way?
[3]

Alfred Soto: This French singer, a mystery to the rest of the world, talk-sings over a “Day Tripper” riff, for which I’d have tolerance if the vocal didn’t sound as if it had never sung to instrumental accompaniment.
[5]

Cédric Le Merrer: Renaud has had a very long career which has seen him go from genuinely great to profoundly embarrassing and… firmly stay in that zone for decades. The cheap folk rock backing is a given at this point but the lyrics sound like a badly written later seasons’ Abraham Simpson rant.
[0]

Cassy Gress: He’s 63 years old, singing a repetitive melody over a 1994 training video acoustic guitar loop; this sounds oddly pitiful. Sounds like someone’s cranky grandpa sitting in the same armchair he’s sat in every day for 40 years, stubbornly refusing to do anything different than he ever has.
[3]

Brad Shoup: I often wonder about the average age of hitmakers now vs. 30, 40, 50 years ago. I can’t find any kind of comparison  — Aaron Zorgel took a really, really rough stab at quantifying current chart acts three years ago; I know how I’d want to do this but I’m juggling enough projects as is — but it feels like greyhairs don’t get hit singles any more, and it feels like they used to. I don’t really know what the American analogue for Renaud would be — “Toujours Debout” sounds a little like dissipated power pop, so maybe “Girls in Their Summer Clothes”, which peaked at #95. (Also, who says “summer clothes”.) The structure’s good enough for me, and Renaud hocks phlegm at his doubters, which is kind of funny too.
[6]

Iain Mew: Hearing Renaud’s voice flirt with falling apart totally for the length of a song is compelling; it’s a shame that literally nothing else about this is.
[3]