We have three songs about cancer at this year’s Eurovision – Kyle Alessandro’s metaphorical Lighter, Klemen’s very descriptive How Much Time Do We Have Left, and Louane’s Maman.
In a way, that’s an unfair grouping, because Kyle and Klemen are bringing songs that are superficially about cancer, but are ultimately about inspiration – angels and light and warriors and all the language we use when we talk about how much people with cancer inspire us. But Louane’s song is less about cancer, which killed her mother when Louane was only 17, and more about letting all of us in on a conversation with her mother, sharing an intensely private moment with the world.
The video below will show the lyrics in both English and French – and knowing what Louane is saying is, I think, essential to the experience of the song:
(I mean, not to be a jerk, but as a non-French speaker, if I don’t see the lyrics, I think it’s a woman saying “mom” over and over again. If I do see the lyrics, I’m here blubbing away.)
For me, what makes Louane’s song the best of the cancer songs is that it’s not superficial. She has not come in with platitudes. She has experienced the worst that can happen – the death of her mother – and experienced long periods of grief.
But Maman is a song about how grief can change over time, and how the pain can give way to memories. It is not a song about how Louane is replacing the grief over her mother with the new love of her son, nor is it a song about how Louane does not still wish for her own mother – she asks plaintively at one point if her mother can still see her.
What Louane does with this song is note that how her move into the role of mother has allowed her to revisit her old memories of her childhood as she experiences similar things with her own son. Her experiences holding his hand have made her recall times when her mother held her hand; the emotion she feels toward her song has made her gain a new appreciation for the feelings her mother would have had toward her. The birth of her son has allowed her grief to take a new, softer shape.
Losing a mother to cancer hurts. And it will hurt for a long time. I write this through tears thinking about my mother, who died of the same cancer that Klemen’s wife had. But Maman is a song about how grief is not always bad – it’s something that allows us to stay connected to and revisit our relationships with our loved ones after they are gone.
The staging for this at pre-parties has featured English subtitles as background; I hope they keep that for Eurovision itself. If so, I can guarantee the audience will be in bits.
My one quibble remains with the use of the child’s voice at the end of the song. I know what Louane is trying to do, but I find it vocally jarring, and wish there were a way to instead depict the shift in relationship and the association with the name through image.
France is potentially tipped to win Eurovision with this song and I think, out of all the songs that have mentioned mothers and motherhood over the years at the contest, this one is most worthy of the prize.
dudepoints.fun 