Five French female songwriters who nobody ever mentions
In this duo, it’s Nelly who writes the lyrics. That’s no doubt why we eventually found ourselves asking: who wrote the songs we’re covering?
The answer is often a woman, and her name doesn’t appear anywhere. Not in tributes, not on programmes, not in conversations. Here are five of them.
1. Marguerite Monnot (1903–1961)
She composed the music for around fifty songs for Édith Piaf. Among them: ‘L’Hymne à l’amour’, ‘Milord’ and ‘Mon légionnaire’.
A child prodigy – playing the piano before the age of three, performing Liszt, Chopin and Mozart in concert at the age of eight – and trained at the Paris Conservatoire, she was destined for a career in classical music. Instead, she chose chanson, cinema and musical theatre. Irma la Douce, which she composed, went on to become one of the few French hits to achieve international success.
Twenty-five years of working with Piaf, with the pair writing around a hundred songs between them. Their partnership is regularly cited as the first female songwriting duo in the history of French chanson.
She died in 1961 of peritonitis, aged fifty-eight. Today, when ‘L’Hymne à l’amour’ is sung at a wedding, people say ‘by Piaf’. The music is hers.
2. Vline Buggy
Behind this name were originally two sisters: Évelyne and Liliane Konyn, daughters of Géo Koger, a lyricist for pre-war music-hall stars. Following Évelyne’s death in 1962, Liliane continued on her own under the same name.
She wrote forty songs for Claude François over a period of sixteen years: ‘Belles, belles, belles’, ‘Si j’avais un marteau’, ‘Le jouet extraordinaire’, ‘J’y pense et puis j’oublie’, ‘Pauvre petite fille riche’.
And, for Johnny Hallyday, ‘Le Pénitencier’.
Add to that Michel Sardou, Michel Fugain, Hugues Aufray, Sheila, Alain Chamfort and Hervé Vilard. A considerable proportion of what France sang in the 1960s came from the same pen, and that pen has no face in the collective memory.
3. Michelle Senlis (1933–2020)
Born Michelle Fricault in Montgeron, she died in Paris in 2020 at the age of eighty-seven.
In 1956, she wrote ‘Les Amants d’un jour’ – with lyrics by Claude Delécluse and music by Marguerite Monnot. Piaf sang it. In other words, one of Piaf’s best-known songs was written and composed by three women, and none of the three is ever mentioned when it is played on the radio.
Yet it was with Jean Ferrat that her collaboration lasted the longest: thirty songs. She also wrote for Juliette Gréco, Hugues Aufray, Fabienne Thibeault, and for Léo Ferré – ‘La Belle Amour’ in 1959, once again with Claude Delécluse.
4. Nicole Louvier
Her first record was released in 1953, with a foreword by Maurice Chevalier, who had recognised her talent.
She was the first French singer to accompany herself on guitar on stage. In 1953. That is to say, before this gesture became the very epitome of the singer-songwriter – and a woman was the first to do it, without it being recorded in the official history of the genre.
Her repertoire is poetic, symbolist, and at times frankly anxious: ‘File la nuit’ in 1955, ‘J’appelle la Terre’ in 1962, ‘La Chanson pour la fin du monde’ in 1963. Others have covered her songs – Lucienne Delyle, Jean-Claude Pascal – and these covers are better known than her own versions.
She was also a writer, poet and producer of cultural programmes on the radio.
5. Anne Sylvestre (1934–2020)
The most tragic case on the list, because she is well known – but only for half of her body of work.
Les Fabulettes – eighteen volumes of children’s songs, sold by the millions and sung in schools throughout France – eventually overshadowed the rest. Yet the rest comprises nearly four hundred songs for adults, written and composed by her over six decades: ‘Les gens qui doutent’, ‘Lazare et Cécile’, ‘Une sorcière comme les autres’.
She hated being reduced to Les Fabulettes, and that is precisely what she was reduced to during her lifetime.
At a time when most women were still performing lyrics written by men, she wrote, composed and performed her own. She eventually set up her own record label to be her own producer, and claimed the title of feminist singer.
Why aren’t they mentioned?
There are three reasons, and none of them is a conspiracy.
The first is structural: it is the performer who is remembered. This is true for men too – how many people know who wrote ‘Le Pénitencier’? But in France, the performer has long been more often a man, and the author in the shadows more often a woman.
The second is a matter of words. The word ‘autrice’ itself fell out of use for two centuries before making a comeback. We cannot properly name what we have no word for.
The third reason is the most trivial: credits aren’t read any more. On a vinyl record, they were printed on the sleeve, in large letters. On a screen, they’re in a menu that nobody opens.
What we can do, in practical terms
One thing, and it takes ten seconds: when you like a song, find out who wrote it. It’s listed on any platform. Often, it’s not the person singing it.
We’ve got into the habit, at gigs, of mentioning the songwriter’s name when we cover a song. It takes five seconds between tracks, it doesn’t put anyone off, and it’s the least we owe to the people whose work we’re borrowing.
If you want to start somewhere: have a listen to ‘Une sorcière comme les autres’. Just one listen is enough to realise what we’ve lost by pigeonholing Anne Sylvestre as a children’s artist.
Nelly and Thomas
Sources: Marguerite Monnot · Michelle Senlis · Nicole Louvier · Slate – Anne Sylvestre was much more than just a children’s singer · Universalis – Anne Sylvestre