Ça te prend la tête: it’s doing your head in In British English we can say “I was gutted.” In American English we say “it was a punch to the guts” and both expressions are similar to “ça t’prend les tripes.” If you’ve ever eaten tripe, you may be familiar with this word! This is a common French expression that means that something really bother you. Ça t’prend les tripes: It’s a punch to the guts The antidote is how alive we feel when we go out and dance away our problems, and this antidote is of course represented by the upbeat melody of “Alors On Danse.”
#One dance lyrics radio edit full
So the voice and lyrics of the song pose the problem: life is full of boring and difficult things that we must do. But in contrast the beat of the song and the music are pulsating and lively. It’s a sort of sonic mimicry of the drudgeries of life. Stromae’s voice as he lists these banalities, annoyances, and problems is very monotone. Essentially the speaker is listing all the problems and drudgery in life that a person might want to forget by dancing the night away. This verse uses a recurring grammatical structure to list off a number of common problems. Tiers monde: third world (as in “developing world”) Les proches: loved ones (usually used in the plural) Les gosses (masculine): children (slang/casual language)
Merde: shit (rude in French as it is in English!)
Huissier: bailiff (in the lyrics I translated this as “reapo man” because it makes more sense in the context of the song – we don’t really say ‘bailiff’ in English as a casual term) Thunes: money (slang – commonly used and not impolite) Taf: work (slang – commonly used and not impolite) It has some interesting vocabulary, so let’s look at that! We’ll analyze the meaning of the verses as well. This song is a pretty straightforward dance song about dancing and partying in order to forget our problems. If you’d like to support this site, please consider streaming this song on Apple Music!Īlors on sort pour oublier tous les problèmesīecause the only thing worse would be deathĪfter the vocab breakdown you can see a great video of Stromae performing Alors On Danse live at the South by Southwest music festival (at a venue called Stubbs BBQ no less!). Let’s look at the French lyrics, the English translation, breakdown the vocabulary and analyze this fun dance song, shall we? Alors On Danse was Stromae’s first hit song in Belgium and around the world.
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