Top 100 - If You Go Away, Dusty Springfield # 69

Story by Nanette

There are many things to know about this song. Perhaps the first is that it was written by Brel, an extraordinary Belgian songwriter that France has clasped to her bosom and called her own and the second is that if you can understand his lyrics they will undo you.

It's important to hear a live version of Brel's performance of this song. He was the consummate artist who rose to meet his audience with the bit between his teeth and so there is a passion in his live performances that you will not get in the studio versions peppered around the internet. And passion is important in this song of songs, there are innumerable tracks about unrequited love but I would argue that there has never been a more ballsy, desperate or beautiful version that wears its heart on its sleeve quite like 'Ne Me Quitte Pas'.

This song gained so much popularity in the 60's that it was translated into English, not without howls of protest from the French speaking world, mind you. To get this right you need a poet laureate of the Ted Hughes calibre. I don't know who did the translation for 'If You Go Away' but it is a complete bastardisation untouched by a poet's hands.

I don't care, I love it anyway. Particularly the breathy, kitsch Dusty Springfield version. There is still a sense of the desperation of the original. The wearing of the heart on a sleeve like its an extreme sport. After all what can be braver than baring your soul and exposing the most sacred and vulnerable parts of ourselves to another.

Maybe you have to have felt something like this to really get this song. In my case this is true, I have been here, known this longing, in my mind made this kind of pleading, been prepared to do almost anything. It is as if the lyrics to 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' have entered my DNA. I know it and it knows me.

This is a song I sing with my little band the Faberges. We are just beginning to get a set together so it's all very new and raw. But each time I sing this I can feel that catch in my throat. A kind of catharsis. And it's probably the best thing we play.         

Artwork by Karin