Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Bruni

Last year, I read an article somewhere about an album by a European singer with lyrics taken from famous English-language poets. I was interested, but not enough to get the album.

In the meantime, the singer has become famous for marrying the President of France. Here's an article about Carla Bruni's use of poems for her album "No Promises."

(Jonathan Mayhew will wince at the idea that Dickinson's hymnal stanzas can be sung to the tune of "Gilligan's Island," but at least that's a change from the usual reference to "The Yellow Rose of Texas.")

2 comments:

swiss said...

you can hear bruni wittering on here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUx8hVdDaPg
damn i wish i'd been some sor of model married to the president of france. we've been playing three chords and putting poetry to it for years. but only when we're drunk! fair play to her i guess.

muchpreferable to my ears is the licorice fields of pontefract
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWMIGaGAOA4

Unknown said...

It's very weird, but the Gilligan's Island theme song came up several times during my songwriting class in January! Not because it's a good song, but because, among other things, it's a well-known example of a song in ballad meter. My advice: don't start singing Emily Dickinson poems to the tune--it's really hard to stop!