1. Background and history

2. Other languages
    "Beyond the Sea"  "Il Mare"  "De zee"  "Das Meer"  "Волна" ("Volna") 

3. Usage in popular culture

4. Notes

5. External links

"La Mer" (English: "The Sea") is a song credited to French composer, lyricist, singer and showman Charles Trenet. The song was first recorded by the French singer Roland Gerbeau in 1945. It was not until 1946 that Trenet recorded his own version. When it was released in 1946, it became an unexpected hit, and has remained a chanson classic and jazz standard ever since.

Background and history

Trenet said that he had written an initial version of the song's lyrics as a poem at the age of 16, many years before he came up with a tune for it. The tune came to him while he was traveling by train in 1943 between Montpellier and Perpignan as he was gazing out of the window at the Étang de Thau, a lagoon in the south of France. He jotted it down on a piece of paper and in the afternoon he worked out the details with his pianist Léo Chauliac. That evening they performed it in front of an audience without much of an impact.^[1][2]

The song was not recorded before the end of World War II. It was first offered to Suzy Solidor, who, however, declined it. After that the job fell to Roland Gerbeau, who recorded it together with Jo Bouillon's orchestra at the end of 1945. The orchestration and chorus were provided by Albert Lasry. Trenet himself recorded his song for the first time in 1946.^[3]

Over the years the song turned out to be rather popular throughout the world and developed into a chanson classic and jazz standard with a large number of prominent artists recording their own versions. Besides the original in French the song was also recorded in several other languages with the English version "Beyond the Sea" being particularly popular and becoming the signature song for the American singer Bobby Darin.^[4] In 1966 there were already over 100 different recordings of La Mer and it was considered to be France's best selling song together with Edith Piaf's "La Vie en rose".^[5] By the time of Trenet's death in 2001 there were supposedly more than 4000 different recordings of it^[1][7] with over 70 million copies sold in total.^[8]

Despite various translations into other languages the original French version was popular outside France and with non-French musicians as well. Trenet published his recording in the US in 1947^[9] and Bing Crosby recorded La Mer on his 1953 album Song Hits of Paris.

Charles Trenet's recording of 'La Mer' is choreographed in Matthew Bourne's 1989 ballet suite, Infernal Galop, "a French dance with English subtitles", in which a merman seduces three matelots.^[10]

The song was also recorded by Cliff Richard.^[2] In 1976 Julio Iglesias included the song on his live album En el Olympia.^[3] The song was included on Dalida's 1999 posthumous album Besame Mucho.^[4] Demis Roussos included the song on his 1995 studio album Immortel.^[5]

More recent versions include Kristina & Laura, Miguel Bosé, Manlio Sgalambro, Lisa del Bo, Biréli Lagrène, Patricia Kaas, Lola Dutronic, Mireille Mathieu and others.

Instrumental versions were done by Ray Conniff His Orchestra and Chorus, Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat, Richard Clayderman, Django Reinhardt.

Other languages

"Beyond the Sea"

English lyrics, unrelated to the French lyrics, were later written by Jack Lawrence and entitled "Beyond the Sea".

The English version has been recorded by many artists, including Benny Goodman,^[6] Mantovani,^[7] Roger Williams^[7] and Gisele MacKenzie,^[7] but Bobby Darin's version released in 1959 is the best known by many, reaching #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song reached the top 40 twice prior to the Darin version (Goodman's version in 1948, Williams's in 1955).

More recent versions include recordings by Lawrence Welk, Martin Denny, Bent Thalmay, Dick Jordan, Helen Shapiro, Johnny Mathis, We Five, The Sandpipers, Sacha Distel, George Benson, Bobby Caldwell, Carol Welsman, Eric Comstock, Gene Nery, Robbie Williams, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart and Kevin Spacey.

"Il Mare"

An Italian version with lyrics by Pasquale Panella was made famous by Sergio Cammariere.{{citation needed|date=November 2016}}

"De zee"

In 1970, Belgian singer Lize Marke released a version of the song with added lyrics by Johnny Steggerda and Jack Bess.^[8]

In 2008 it was recorded in Dutch a second time but with new lyrics by Herman Pieter de Boer rather than the 1970 lyrics. It was performed as a jazz tune by Rob de Nijs.

"Das Meer"

The first German version was written in 1948 by Hans Fritz Beckmann und Lale Andersen. The latter recorded it with Michael Jary and his orchester in the same year. However Beckmann was unhappy with the first attempt and rewrote it. The new version was first recorded by the German actress and singer Liselotte Malkowsky in 1949 and became rather popular in German speaking countries.^[20] Later recordings

comprise the Austrian Schlager singer Lolita, the Austrian soprano Eva Lind, the Italian-German singer and entertainer Caterina Valente and the German entertainer and band leader Götz Alsmann.{{cn|date=November 2018}}

"Волна" ("Volna")

A Russian version named Волна (Wave) was adopted by two Soviet Russian poets and translators, Samuil Bolotin and Tatiana Sikorskaya, in the 1950s for Leonid Utyosov, popular Soviet Russian singer of Jewish origin. It was included into the album called "Ах, Одесса моя" ("Oh, my Odessa")^[9].

Usage in popular culture

The French original is featured prominently in a variety of films, including L.A. Story, in which it is played during the opening montage; French Kiss (1995), in which it is sung by lead actor Kevin Kline^[10] and Mr. Bean's Holiday, which uses a recording of Trenet himself in its final scene. It also is played in the last episode of White Collar named Aú Revoir started on a record player by Mozzie and then it plays over Neal Caffrey cracking a safe and Neal Caffrey walking through the streets of Paris. The song is sung in the French documentary film Blood of the Beasts (1949). Julio Iglesias' 1976 live recording is used instead of dialogue and other sounds (including a gun shot) during the last three and a half minutes of the 2011 British spy-film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, directed by Tomas Alfredson. The film and the song both end in the same moment (credit credentials aside).

It is performed in the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997) by Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz. The Trenet recording is heard over the end credits of an episode of The Simpsons titled "The Squirt and the Whale".^{[2][26][27][28][29]}

On British television, the original version of the song was used as the title music for ITV's coverage of UEFA Euro 2016.^[11]

Other movies that featured the song include Every Girl Should Be Married, A Safe Place, Edith and Marcel, Tequila Sunrise, Bitter Moon, Funny Bones, The Way We Laughed, Mondays in the Sun, The Dreamers, Marseille, Beyond the Sea, Man of the Year, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Autómata, The Brand New Testament, Nina and One Wild Moment.{{cn|date=February 2019}} The Robbie Williams version plays over the closing credits of Finding Nemo and is included on the soundtrack.^[12]

Notes

External links

• Second Hand Songs: La Mer page
• Discogs: La Mer page
• Will Friedwald: Ocean Crossing at bobbydarin.com
• Lyricstranslate Original lyrics plus crowdsourced translations (not singable) into many languages. Unlike many webpages, this page preserves the French diacritical marks–été not ete, bergère not bergere, etc.—which are part of the spelling.

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