A song that creeps into your head and you can’t get rid of is said to be “an earworm”.
• Read also: The 100 best songs in the history of Quebec
• Read also: “A song is a miracle!”
Me, the songs that stick to my skin, I prefer to call them “heartworms”.
They are embedded there and nothing can dislodge them.
My cousin Evelyne was my best friend. Jean-Pierre Ferland was his favorite singer. A chance that we have was his favorite song.
When she died at 48 of a dazzling cancer, I lost my cousin and my best friend at the same time. And at his funeral, in the packed church, his two sisters played A chance that we have.
What do you want? Now, every time I hear Ferland sing that, I say to myself “Lucky I got you, Évelyne”. And as Ferland became my friend when I wrote his biography, I also say to myself: “Lucky that I have you, Jean-Pierre”.
I literally crack when Sylvain Lelièvre says he likes “useless things that do us good”.
Maybe that’s a song we love. Just a useless thing… that makes us feel good. A melody that helps us through the most difficult times. Words which, two by two put together, bring tears to our eyes, remind us of a memory, of a loved one.
What makes a song top our personal charts? It’s when an author has found THE words to say exactly, precisely, what we think, what we feel, better than we can ever express.
This pinch in the heart, I feel it when I hear the dashing Cowboys sing:
“How do these poor people / To go through the whole course / Of a life without love?” in America is crying.
Or when in The staircasePaul Piché sings: “I teach you nothing when I say / That we are nothing without love / To help the world you have to know how to be loved”.
These authors, these composers, I love them with love. Thank you for your “heartworms”.
