THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,185) Robert Charlebois — “Ordinaire”/”Ordinary”
WARNING — If you are a Québécois or from France, read no further! Ne lis pas plus loin! This song is a francophone legend!
“‘Ordinaire,’ the heart-breaking cry of a fading show business star . . . ha[s] become [one] of [Robert Charlebois’ (see #44)] most popular songs”. (François Couture, https://www.allmusic.com/album/un-gars-ben-ordinaire-mw0000699064), with a “[m]elody that begins gently, and crescendoes in a plea of desperate words: ‘sublime’ is the only word that fits! UNFORGETTABLE”. (fontclair, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDGNA83mxDo (courtesy of Google Translate) “[A]h the beautiful, desperate song . . . [v]ery painful and magnificent, dizzying and pathetic.” (jmcelse, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDGNA83mxDo (courtesy of Google Translate)) “It is a particularly Québecois take on the-travails-of-a-rock-star song, singing as it does about being just an ordinary guy. In 1970, Robert Charlebois won the Sopot International Song Festival with this song.” (https://www.tedmartin.ca/Canada150/Content/Songs/095-Robert_Charlebois-Ordinaire.htm) The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame says that:
Almost an instant classic and now a staple of Quebec music, ‘Ordinaire’ remains a very accurate depiction of today’s obsession with celebrity and of the negative effect such pressure can have on an artist. Charlebois is still to this day affectionately nicknamed the ‘ordinary guy’ and this song remains, for the Quebec public, one of his greatest.
“You want me to be a God If only you knew how old I feel”
The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame adds:
In 1969, Claudine Monfette, a.k.a. Mouffe, wrote this song for Robert Charlebois, her romantic partner at the time. . . . [She] was able to perfectly describe the essence of Charlebois’ spirit and the pressure that was afflicting the artist, this only 2 years after his spectacular flight to stardom in the Francophone artistic community. The song, with music composed by Pierre Nadeau of the Quatuor de Jazz Libre du Québec, won first prize at the Sopot Festival, in Poland in 1970. . . . “Ordinaire” was written at the peak of Charlebois’ popularity, after the Osstid’show, which made him a star and a household name in Quebec. . . . Tired and exhausted, the lyrics to Ordinaire seemed to unmask the false and almost mythical imagery that people and critics in Quebec had quickly made not only of him, but of the Mouffe/Charlebois couple.
Of Charlebois, Sophie Beaulé writes that he “wrote Quebec’s first psychedelic song, he was the first chansonnier to use an electric guitar, he brought humor into rock — [he] is the musician who pushed the Québécois popular song into the contemporary world.” (An Anthology of French and Francophone Singers from A to Z: “Singin’ in French”) And François Couture tells us:
Robert Charlebois is one of the most enduring figures in Quebec rock history and surely has been the most influential during his career which spans five decades. During this time he started as a folk singer, shocked Quebec by turning to an extreme psychedelic rocker, came back to a singer/songwriter credo, and evolved as time went by into an adult pop/rock star. . . . [A]s a businessman revolutionized the world of Quebec micro-breweries with his company Unibroue (makers of beers La Maudite and La Fin du Monde) in the ’90s. Charlebois . . . started his career in folk clubs in the early ’60s, while he also explored acting. His first LP won a prize for Best Folk Album in 1965. The young Charlebois was clean-cut, well-spoken, poetic . . . . [and his songs] appealed to the upper-class students and the intellectual elite. . . . In early 1968, he took a trip to California. Experiencing the flower power movement first hand made the cultural and religious yoke he grew up in literally explode. Back in Montréal, he recorded the seminal LP Robert Charlebois Louise Forestier. Screaming, swearing, wearing outrageous costumes, and presenting his own brand of experimental psychedelic rock, he staged L’Osstidcho, a scandalous anti-show. “Lindberg” became a hit in Quebec and in France, quickly followed by “Ordinaire.” In the early ’70s, he developed a sound somewhere between his days as an unaccompanied folk singer and his extremes of the late ’60s. . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/robert-charlebois-mn0000047962#biography
Here he is live in ’72:
Live in ’73:
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Every now and again we would get his songs on the radio here in Southern Ontario. I’m not attempting any French cause what little I remember is pretty bad.
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