GayCultureLand: Charles Aznavour

Charles Aznavour, (born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian on 22 May 1924), is a French/Armenian singer-songwriter-actor, who has appeared in more than 60 films, has written more than 1,200 songs, sung in eight languages and sold more than 180 million records. His break in show business came when Edith Piaf chose him as a touring partner and helped him build his act. He's one of the few French to go to #1 in the UK (with She).

Aznavour isn't gay, but he wrote and performed one of the best and most enduring gay song classics: Comme ils Disent was inspired by Aznavour's chauffer, secretary and decorator friend called Androuchka. It was released in 1972, went Top 10 in France and eventually sold around 300 000 copies.

Originally, his entourage implored him not to release the song. But, “I wanted to write what nobody else was writing. I’m very open, very risky, not afraid of breaking my career because of one song. I don’t let the public force me to do what they want me to do. I force them to listen to what I have done. That’s the only way to progress, and to make the public progress.”

It's a storytelling song - and quite an exemplary one at that. It's sung in first person (and Aznavour always sings it in character) and it tells the story of a man who lives with his mother and his pets, does most of the house chores to relieve his mom and works as a decorator and a stylist during the day. His real calling, however, is what he does at night: he's a transvestite in a drag show.

The song goes through a day in the life of our hero: the gasps of the (male) audience as he strips down to nothing during his show. The after work gathering of the performers and their entourage in the early hours of the morning in an all-night cafe, to joke and gossip. The heckling and insults that are often hurled at him while he works. The lonely return home in the morning, where he thinks of the many joyless love affairs that he's had and of the one young man "beautiful like a god who had set his memory on fire", who, however spends most of his time on the beds of women. The final verse, 40 years before Lady Gaga's Born This Way, goes:

In truth, nobody has the right

To judge me or to blame me

And I specifically state

That Nature is solely responsible

For what I am - I am gay... As they say.

Here's Charles Aznavour in 1972, in a very powerful live version:

Here is Aznavour again, in the 90s or 00s. This version has the advantage of having both the original lyrics, as well as the English translation, as subtitles: