Près de 200 poèmes et chansons pour (re)découvrir l'œuvre pleine de verve et non conformiste d’une des plus belles figures de la chanson française. C’est de la « mauvaise herbe », un copain de Brel et Ferré ; c’est un portraitiste sans vergogne au répertoire impertinent ; un poète, qui chante Ronsard et Villon ; un timide aussi, qui fredonne « sous un coin de parapluie ». Tous ses albums, soit près de deux cents chansons, sont réunis dans cette ballade menée par le parolier génial qu’était Brassens, l’éternel « polisson de la chanson ».
Georges Charles Brassens was a French singer-songwriter and poet.
As an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his elegant songs with their harmonically complex music for voice and guitar and articulate, diverse lyrics. He is considered one of France's most accomplished postwar poets. He has also set to music poems by both well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon (Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux [fr]), Victor Hugo (La Légende de la Nonne, Gastibelza), Paul Verlaine, Jean Richepin, François Villon (La Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis), and Antoine Pol (Les Passantes). He a huge influence on several european songwriters as Fabrizio De Andrè, who reprised some of his songs.
During World War II, he was forced by the Germans to work in a labor camp at a BMW aircraft engine plant in Basdorf near Berlin in Germany (March 1943). Here Brassens met some of his future friends, such as Pierre Onténiente, whom he called Gibraltar because he was "steady as a rock." They would later become close friends.
After being given ten days' leave in France, he decided not to return to the labor camp. Brassens took refuge in a small cul-de-sac called "Impasse Florimont," in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, a popular district, where he lived for several years with its owner, Jeanne Planche, a friend of his aunt. Planche lived with her husband Marcel in relative poverty: without gas, running water, or electricity. Brassens remained hidden there until the end of the war five months later, but ended up staying for 22 years. Planche was the inspiration for Brassens's song Jeanne.
He wrote and sang, with his guitar, more than a hundred of his poems. Between 1952 and 1976, he recorded fourteen albums that include several popular French songs such as Les copains d'abord, Chanson pour l'Auvergnat, La mauvaise réputation, and Mourir pour des idées. Most of his texts are tinged with black humour and are often anarchist-minded.
In 1967, he received the Grand Prix de Poésie of the Académie française.