La Vie en Rose

Édith Piaf wrote the words of "La Vie en rose" herself in 1945, and almost nobody around her believed in it. When she suggested it to the composer Marguerite Monnot, Monnot dismissed it as foolishness. Her songwriting team found it weaker than the rest of her repertoire, so she set it aside. The music was eventually credited to Louiguy, though it was probably Robert Chauvigny who finished it. Piaf even offered the song to another singer, Marianne Michel, who changed one word in the title line, swapping things for life. A year later Piaf changed her mind. She first sang it in concert in 1946 and audiences loved it at once. Its picture of the joy of finding true love reached people who had just lived through the hardships of the Second World War. Columbia released it as a single in 1947, and it sold a million copies in the United States alone. By 1950, with English lyrics by Mack David, seven American versions reached the Billboard charts, including recordings by Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong. It became the song that made Piaf internationally famous, and encouraged by its success she went on to write eighty more. Grace Jones turned it into a bossa nova hit in 1977, Armstrong's version found a new generation through the film WALL-E, and the 2007 biopic of Piaf took its title from it. Few songs her own team doubted have travelled so far.