C’est La Vie Lyrics. Works, Volume 1 was a double album with Keith Emerson the focus of the first side, Greg Lake the second, Carl Palmer the third, and the entire band sharing equally on Side 4. “C’est La Vie” was one of the songs Lake wrote for his side with help from lyricist Pete Sinfield, who was his bandmate in King Crimson.
Telling the story of the song, Lake said: “I used to live in Paris for a while. A very beautiful city. I sometimes would go out walking in the streets there, and you’d often hear this instrument playing. I don’t know what they call it, really, but it’s one of these barrel organ things you wind up. It’s the sort of sound, it’s a bit like a Las Vegas casino. It kind of lives with you.
Anyway, I’d heard this barrel organ playing. And I walked on back home towards my apartment. I went past this cafe and I heard the voice of Edith Piaf, the famous French lady singer. And when I got back to the apartment I thought, I really would like to write a sort of French song with some French feeling. I don’t really speak French, but I knew this phrase, ‘c’est la vie,’ that’s life. And so I thought, That would make a good idea for a song.
So I wrote this song, “C’est la Vie,” and we recorded it and put it onto Works Volume I. However, a couple of years later it was covered by a French singer called Johnny Hallyday. And he’s a sort of French Elvis Presley. Anyway, he had a #1 hit with it in France, which as an Englishman, of course, gave me a great deal of pleasure.”
C’est La Vie Lyrics (1971)
C’est la vie
Have your leaves all turned to brown
Will you scatter them around you
C’est la vie
Do you love
And then how am I to know
If you dont let your love show for me
C’est la vie
Oh c’est la vie
Oh c’est la vie
Who knows, who cares, for me
C’est la vie
In the night
Do you light a lover’s fire
Do the ashes of desire for you remain
Like the sea
There’s a love to deep to show
Took a storm before my love
Flowed for you
C’est la vie
Oh c’est la vie
Oh c’est la vie
Who knows, who cares, for me
C’est la vie
Like a song
Out of tune and out of time
All I needed was a rhyme for you
C’est la vie
Do you give
Do you live from day to day
Is there no song I can play for you
C’est la vie
Oh c’est la vie
Oh c’est la vie
Who knows, who cares, for me
C’est la vie
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