Georges Brassens (October 22, 1921 - October 29, 1981) was a French singer and songwriter.
Georges Brassens was born in Sète, in southern France. An iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his simple, elegant songs and articulate, diverse lyrics; indeed, he is considered one of France's best postwar poets, and won the national poetry prize. In addition, he set to music poems by many well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon (Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux), Victor Hugo, Jean Richepin and others.
He rarely performed outside his own country, and his lyrics are hard to translate, though attempts have been made. He began his career in the 1940s. Among his most famous songs:
- Les copains d'abord, about a boat of that name, and friendship;
- Chanson pour l'Auvergnat, lauding those who take care of the downtrodden against the pettiness of the bourgeois and the harshness of law enforcement;
- La cane de Jeanne for Marcel and Jeanne Planche, who befriended and sheltered him; and others
- La mauvaise réputation - "the bad reputation", semi-autobiography;
- Le gorille – tells, in a humoristic fashion, about a gorilla with a large penis (and admired for this by ladies) who escapes and, mistaking a robed judge for a woman, forcefully sodomizes him; the song contrasts the wooden attitude that the judge had when sentencing a man to death by the guillotine, with his cries of mercy when being assault by the gorilla; this song, considered pornographic, was banned for a while; the song's refrain (Gare au goriiiiiiiiille – "beware the gorilla") is widely known;
- La fessée ("the spanking"), about a man being seduced by a widow, being offended by her, spanking her, then being seduced finally.
He died of cancer in 1981, in Saint-Gély-du-Fesc , near Sète, having suffered health problems for many years.
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