Losing Piaf
This chapter examines the meanings of Piaf’s death in 1963. By the early 1960s, France’s experience of decolonisation, migrations, consumerism and the baby boom was marking the end of a certain conception of chanson which Piaf had embodied for 25 years. Her death avoided the question of whether her particular version of chanson would have survived the arrival of rock and pop on the one hand and the rise of the ‘poetic’ singer-songwriter on the other. Her health problems, which included addiction, were affecting the quality of her voice and performance. Her booking at the Olympia in 1960-61 was heralded as her come-back and this impression was boosted by her introducing her supposedly autobiographical song ‘Non je ne regrette rien’, which became her swan song.