PETER SARSTEDT – “Where Do You Go To My Lovely?”
In an NME interview, John Peel once named this record as his personal worst of all time. The man heard a really very large number of bad records so this claim made quite an impression on me. And it’s easy to imagine the young Peel, earnestly making a name for himself playing the furthest out progressive rock to – he might hope – a turned-on nation, being utterly and profoundly horrified that the British public chose this instead.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. British pop culture, for all that it mostly measures itself against its own past or an American present, is subject to occasional spasms of admiration for the sophisticates of Continental Europe. On a subcultural level this gave the UK mod, among other things. At the supercultural level of the singles chart it tends to manifest itself in the occasional hit by Brits rolling around in broad European stereotypes – David Whitfield, Rene and Renata, and here Peter Sarstedt. My MP3 of “Where Do You Go To My Lovely?” is genre-tagged “chanson”, which is somehow both insane and appropriate.
This is a completely, whole-heartedly, marvellously bogus record. Marvellously not because it’s good but because Sarstedt with his pseudo-French accent sells its naffness with such gusto. Its storyline – street kid becomes rich socialite but cannot escape her past – is basically an excuse for a list of high-ticket brand and celebrity names, drawn out to remarkable length. The awful eye-rolling apogee is reached when Sarstedt follows the phrase “for a laugh” with an “a-ha-ha-ha” of such well-rehearsed spontaneity I cringe.
“Where Do You Go To My Lovely?” sounds so ridiculous now it’s quite the entertaining listen: certainly there’s no way I’d agree with Peel’s assessment. The question I can’t answer is: was it ridiculous then, even to the people who bought it? Certainly there is no reason why liking a record enough to buy it need also involve “taking it seriously” – for starters, “My Lovely” is an entertainingly imitatable record. But it’s also possible that buyers in 1969 did find it moving, or mysterious, or sophisticated – reactions that seem uncanny to me now.
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Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 16,010 views • Share/Save
Well, I was surprised to see that this song had generated any controversy at all, and the bile contained in some of them… I only heard this song a few times, back in 1969, and I have always loved it. As a provincial Canadian, I heard obscure references to a high-life that I despised at the time. It was, therefore, just that “Marie Claire” be unhappy “inside her head”. The “oom pah-pah” beat and that spooky, “Charles DeGaulle on accordion” accompaniment combined to make this a tempting confection for me, and revisiting it, I find I like it as much now as then.
To Tom, Doctor Casino and Doctor Mod (you know “Doctor” is frequently abbreviated “Dr.”, which does save a few electrons on the InterPet) – Sarstedt is not singing with a French accent, he is using his own distinct clipped style of phrasing which actually helps his lyrics be understood. He does pronounce a few French people and place names reasonably well. The fact that you modern day phonies don’t know what a French accent is, either real or fake, and have probably never heard one because you are trapped in the slithering, self reflective cage of your feeble egos, is totally indicative of the vapidity of your thinking and the fatuity of most of what passes for “critique” on the WWW. Plese don’t be bullied into believing everything you read!
These Sarstedt troopers really are a class above the foaming Floydians we usually get in here.
Thanks for the compliment but I’m not a “Sarstedt trooper”. In fact, when I recently heard the song for the first time in nearly 40 years in the movie “The Darjeeling Limited” I mistakenly thought the performer was Al Stewart until the credits rolled by. What gets my goat is people who make judgments based on faulty assumptions and arrogant lack of attention to detail. Do your research and think on your own before sounding off!
Eric Random, Founder
Random Factory
Independent Critical Thought
RandomVisits@yahoo.com
To be honest from the time I first heard it (probably only around five years ago) I’ve thought of his voice on this record as more Irish-sounding than anything else but that’s just me. I’m intrigued by it’s use in these two Wes Anderson films one of which you mentioned.
Glad to see Peter Sarstedt getting his recognition in The Darjeeling Limited.
Canadian version is at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/peterthompson/wheredoyougoto(mylovely)?
Sarstedt doesn’t use either a “phoney” or a real French accent, except for pronouncing French names correctly. I realize that could rile some Brits who hate to pronounce French words correctly, but rather anglicize foreign words (GAr-age for garAGE, BUFF-ee for bufFET, etc.). If anything, his accent leans to Indian, which is heard on his softened consonants. As to the “name-dropping” aspect, I see that as an essential feature in the description of the girl gone jet-set Europa. What purpose does it serve to read negativity into it?
Why can’t the above critics and detractors just enjoy the song for its lilting melody, unique structure, and Sarstedt’s sardonic phrasing and delivery? Instead they have done an excercise in over-analisation, and hypercriticism.
PS I must admit that I had to admire the brilliance, depth, and articulateness of many of the earlier (above) detractors, if only they hadn’t directed their awesome musical knowledge and perception into totally unnecessary (and often vicious) negativity. Pity.
Jeremy and I are basically saying the same thing. I agree with him that the Brits simply cannot stand hearing French pronounced correctly and refuse to do it themselves. What other race on the planet would look at the name Saint-Jean and pronounce it “Sinjin”?
Eric Random, Founder
Random Factory
Independent Critical Thinking
RandomVisits@yahoo.com
In 1973 I was a 19 year old student doing a liberal arts semester in Copenhagen. I met Peter Sarstedt in a bar. I had never heard of him. We talked about music for hours. He mentioned at the time that he had one hit song a few years ago. He seemed like an ordinary nice person.
i think the song is perfectly lovely. i was very moved and Natalie Portman does it great justice.
brings me (male) to tears:
- tune
- two Naples orphans, one which makes big (or does she ?)
- (perhaps) heard as baby
no corny accents, etc. for me
I had a good laugh regarding this song the other day. My youngest son is 23 years old, and a big Wes Anderson fan. “Where Do You Go To…” has always held a strong fascination for me, even though I never knew who the artist was or even the real title. I thought the song was called “Marie Claire”. Anyway, my son came home from watching The Darjeeling Limited the other day, and he was raving about this song that kept repeating throughout the film. He only had to hum a snippet, and give me a couple of lyrics before I knew what he wanted. It seems I’ve raised a sentimental slob,like myself, who, if some of the reactions on this site are credited, has the same treacly taste in music as his old man.
“What other race on the planet”
race??
The best thing about The Darjeeling Limited was this song!
imitable, not imitatable
The song is correctly referred to as a classic. It got to number 1 for a very good reason: the melody and structure are memorable and fascinating, and the lyrics rather originally build something cinematic. Of course it is jam packed with cultural references: that was the point.
I love the little tastes it gives of the sixties and the riviera. It got to number 1 because it is sui generis (no other song exploits the zeitgeist as well).
It defined the times beautifully and hearing it now is like finding piles of old newspapers in a loft. It is Sophia Loren, but it is also Lady Penelope.
I loved it then. I love it now.
[...] vai gostar, de um cara chamado Peter Sarstedt. Ele foi considerado por John Peel como um dos piores de todos os tempos. A letra é [...]
Great song. What a load of bull about the fake ‘hahaha’ laugh – he ain’t trying to convince you it’s real.
Don’t think too much. Enjoy.
That’s my motto, too.
My personal opinion is that a song becomes popular because of the melody, music, arrangements,and the beat or rhythm.
If a song as good lyrics then it’s like icing on the cake.
My 21 year old had the same reaction after see “The Darjeeling Limited”, he loves this song and he’s a punk rocker.
I met Peter Sarstedt once in a bar. He tried to kill my friend. Booooo!
I would kill Peter Sarstedt now. Fucking moustache would-be murderer. This is the worst song I’ve ever heard. IN! MY! LIFE!
I think this a brilliant lyric, that hits all the right spots for me, in my capacity as the flagbearer for the Sentimentalist movement. I think I read the lyrics before I ever knew the song, though, in an easy pieces for guitar book, and listening to Sarstedt know his performance is a fair bit camper than I’d imagined the song in my head.
But still, a much better effort than the poxy nursery rhymes that were riding high in the charts at the end of ’68. Re the rather inauthentic portrait of France it paints, I suspect that the South of France seemed much more exotic and faraway to dour English folk then, before the invention of the Chunnel, twenty quid flights on Easyjet or even the internet, I suspect he would have got away with it…
I really like this song. Its magic lies much in the fact that one can barely tell whether this is a satirical response to the classic french “Chanson” or really just his way of telling a story. His exaggerated use of names and brands of the time and place make the song interesting and sounding very authentic. It generally sounds quite honest because the melody and voice match the “accusations” quite well. Although it does not have the high moralic approach like the typical protest songs of that era it is still a evry innovative song that imho justifies the #1 position it reached. Still today a very enjoyable song, just different from your typical pop hits.
Do you not think all those references are namedropping to show how well travelled Peter S is? The way his chest puffs up when he sings “Boulevard Saint Michel” makes me want to slap him especially hard.
I don’t think he’s being satirical. He used the same over-earnest approach on seventies radio hit Beirut, which I’m assuming wasn’t satirical or ironic.
Follow-up no.10 hit Frozen Orange Juice, on the other hand, is a blissful scoot around the Massif Central. In a Morgan. With the top down. Top summer comp recommendation! Similar ingredients but none of the midbrow cultural grandstanding.
I actually loved this back in the day, still do, and am genuinely surprised at the sledging it has received here with only a handful of posters not only leaping to its defence but outlining its merits, which I believe it has in spades. As someone said up-thread, it is a novel within a song and Sarstedt’s attempt to inject an element of class and sophisication into his story-telling does not for me fail. That said, I can perfectly understand how WDYGTMY could easily annoy those who consider that the song looks down their noses at them and thereby dismiss it as merely pompous grandstanding (I would suggest that this was Peel’s main objection, a man who so desperately jettisoned and then denied his own middle class roots) but if you don’t take that view there is very little to dislike about it, I think.
Btw, I have been to the magnificence which is Paris many times, oftentimes staying in a hotel off the Boulevard Saint Michel just past the Sorbonne. I have to admit that I have more than once wandered up and down that street trying to work out where Marie Clare’s fancy apartment could have been. But then this was after a more than agreeable prolonged lunch.
i have loved this lyric since i was five years old in fact i am the english version
I’m surprised at the bile in some of the comments on this — I think you have totally misunderstood what’s happening in this song.
Sure, it name-drops brands and “exotic” locations and famous people — and the comments seem to be slagging the song off for doing that.
But the *song* isn’t doing the name-dropping of those brands and locations and people; it is *Marie-Claire* that is name-dropping those things, and the song is trying to call her back to reality. The song is critiquing Marie-Claire’s obsession with them. The song wants us to see how false all that stuff is: the song is rooted, it is Marie-Claire who has lost that.
The commentators who are slagging the song for its pseudo-Frenchness and obsession with brands are failing to get inside the lyric — get inside *his* head, if you like… All of those elements are there, of course, but they are not being presented as good things: they are the things that have destroyed Marie-Claire. The lyric wants you to see how clutzy all that stuff is, because the singer wants to tell Marie-Claire that none of that stuff matters.
Loads of comments have focussed on the contrived falseness of the “a-ha-ha-ha” line — but it is deliberately that way, because it is not the narrator/singer who is laughing. That is the false, contrived laugh of Marie-Claire. Maybe her sophisticated brand-obsessed name-dropping jet-set friends think her laughter is real, but the narrator knows it is a deliberately contrived, fake joyity that really only tries to hide the hurt — the hurt she still feels when she’s alone, with none of her high class friends around her, alone in her bed…
It seems to me that almost all of the criticisms of the song in the comments here are actually it’s strengths. You say it is “faux sophistication” — but it’s the singer’s intention to say that Marie-Claire’s airs and graces are just faux. You say the French accent is forced — but the singer is telling Marie-Claire that, if she is honest enough to remember, she isn’t really French, everything about her is forced.
Sarstedt was born in India, and I’ll draw a parallel to Slumdog Millionaire here — the storyline is the same, even if the parallel is a bit forced. You can’t blame the girl for escaping her poverty however she could, and you can’t blame the boy for still loving her. Except, in Slumdog, he becomes a millionaire too. In “My Lovely”, the boy is for always left behind — you have a picture of him standing in the street watching her being swept away by one of her boyfriends in a limousine while he busks on his accordion for a few cents.
It’s a great song, for all the reasons the commentators have been criticising. And for more: the constant repetitions of “yes you do” “yes you are” “yes I do” “yes it does” etc… a chorus within a verse, followed by a chorus with a chorus inside of it.
Not a “10″, for sure, but certainly not a “3″ either. One of a kind, never repeated because it can’t be repeated. I’d give it 7, and shame on the people who spewed so much bile on it.
Re 104: I certainly don’t dislike this song as much as some people above, and I thought it worked terrifically well in The Darjeeling Express, but I think you’re being either a bit naive or a bit disingenuous. The classic joke about name dropping goes something along the lines of ‘There really is nothing more vulgar than name dropping, as I’ve said many times to Mick Jagger, Bill Gates and Richard Dawkins, and they all agree with me’. A song supposedly criticising pretentious people is a great opportunity to have your cake and eat it. In that, it reminds me of the dreadful mid-60s film Darling, which is a monstrously snobbish putdown of a girl on the make.
(And your Sarstedt was born in India/Slumdog Millionaire link is massively tenuous – thousands of Brits were born there before independence, not least Cliff Richard).
Amazing how a record lasting over 4 minutes can turn , on successive hearings, into 4 hours; 4 days and 4 years!
The sheer monotony of this record makes it completely tortuous -it is one of the very few records which I will switch off immediately if I am unlucky enough to hear the opening bars.
P.S. Frozen Orange Juice seems like a masterpiece by comparison.