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Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille

"Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille"
Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille sleeve.jpg
Single by Jacques Dutronc
Released March 1968
Format 45
Recorded 1968
Genre French rock
Length 2:55
Label Disques Vogue
Songwriter(s) Jacques Lanzmann, Anne Ségalen, Jacques Dutronc
Producer(s) Unknown
Jacques Dutronc singles chronology
"La publicité"
(1967)
"Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille"
(1968)
"Le courrier du cœur"
(1968)
"La publicité"
(1967)
"Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille"
(1968)
"Le courrier du cœur"
(1968)

"Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" ("It is five o'clock, Paris awakens") is the sixth single by French singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc, released in 1968. It is featured on his self-titled second album.

In 1991, it was voted best French-language single of all time in a poll of music critics.

The song originated from an idea put forward by Jacques Wolfsohn, an artistic director at Disques Vogue, during a meal at his home with songwriting partners Jacques Dutronc and Jacques Lanzmann. He suggested a song on the subject of Paris in the morning. The other two Jacques began writing the song at around 11 pm that evening, and completed it at daybreak. It takes inspiration from "", an 1802 song by Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers.

The modernized lyrics replace Désaugiers' sunrise tableau of bakeries, fruitstands and street cleaners with a less soothing scene of trucks, cars and strippers. Familiar Parisian landmarks such as the Place Dauphine are reexamined for the 1960s; the grand railway station Gare Montparnasse is described as "no more than a carcass" ("...n'est plus qu'une carcasse...") because, at the time the song was written, it was in the process of demolition to make way for the Tour Montparnasse skyscraper.

The flute solo in the recording was added at the end of the session. Dutronc and Lanzmann were unhappy with the arrangement and felt that it lacked something. Dutronc had the idea of adding a manouche-style guitar part, but a flautist working elsewhere in the same building, Roger Bourdin, was asked to listen to the recording and agreed to improvise the short but evocative solos that appear after each sung line on the finished track.

The lyrics to the song are co-credited to Lanzmann's wife at the time, Anne Ségalen.

"Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" was released as a four-track EP in France in March 1968.

Dutronc performed the song on the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française television shows Tilt magazine, broadcast on 27 March 1968, and Palmarès des chansons, broadcast on 18 April 1968.


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