Freedom, equality, femininity.
The three terms resonate in harmony with the artist and the personality that was the singer Juliette Gréco.
An uninhibited woman.
Put end to end, they serve as the title of a posthumous album (to be released on March 5, 2021, at Decca) of this emblematic figure of French song who died on September 23.
Enamored of freedom, often considered daring, if not transgressive, Juliette Gréco detonated in a more conservative society, from the mid-twentieth century.
His loves and his multiple marriages were widely commented on.
The artist put into song the sometimes daring words, love and resistance, of the poets of his time.
Some of her famous interpretations can be found in this ode to women: Raymond Queneau (
If you imagine yourself
), Robert Desnos (
Dreamer and fragile
), Léo Ferré (
Jolie môme
), Jules Larfogue (
The eternal feminine
) ...
Read also: Juliette Gréco, free singer and champion of freedom, died at 93
She begins with fanfare with
Je suis comme je suis
(Jacques Prévert), a way of recalling the essential, the story of a woman who is accountable to no one.
"
I am as I am / I am made like this / What more do you want?
/ What do you want from me?
», She repeats.
The high point of the scandal, the inevitable
Déshabillé-moi
is evidently included in the repertoire of
Liberté, equality, fraternité.
Released in 1967, the title was, according to legend, written for a stripper.
The national radios censored it initially.
For years, television associated it with its white square, synonymous with content prohibited to those under the age of sixteen, when Gréco sang it on stage.
Explicit, of a sexual nature, the song gives power to the woman, imperative in front of the man harnessed to his pleasure.
At the time, eroticism disturbed but seduced the crowds and became a classic.
Jolie môme,
by Léo Ferré, is “
the most sexist song there is
”?
No problem for Gréco, who declares, to
Madame Figaro
, in 2009, to have "
turned it upside down
".
"
I made it an object of provocation and not at all of submission.
Out of respect for women, I turn away,
”explains the one who called herself a feminist“
without knowing it, but since the age of 3
”.
The muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was rebellious, decidedly free, even with the texts of poets that she transcended.