2023-09-15 16:22:34
2023 Rugby World Cup in FrancedossierReleased at the end of the 1970s, the hit song by the Franco-American artist experienced an improbable return to favor, taken up in chorus by a good number of supporters during the Rugby World Cup, after those of the basketball.
It’s an air of yesteryear that has been growing, growing, since the opening of the Rugby World Cup. Like the legendary Freed from Desire, repopularized during Euro 2016 football, or the classic Peña Baiona, you can hear it almost everywhere you can find a rugby ball. In the bars of oval ball lovers, in the aisles of the stadiums which host the event. “I had the sun / Day and night in Émilie’s eyes / I warmed my life with her smile / I had the sun / Night and day in the eyes of love / And melancholy in Emilie’s sun / Became joy of living.”
The older generation will no doubt have recognized the refrain from Dans les yeux d’Emilie, well known from Joe Dassin’s repertoire. The somewhat melancholy piece, which narrates a winter love affair between the artist and a Quebec woman, is paradoxically hummed in moments of joy during the sporting competition.
On the Internet, videos of supporters repeating the words at the top of their lungs abound everywhere, to the point of trending on TikTok. But how could a successful song born forty-five years ago suddenly find itself catapulted among the key songs of the Rugby World Cup?
Official anthem of the Blues… basketball
The origins of this unexpected return to favor actually date back to the beginning of the 2010s, when a southwest banda, Pomarez Harmony, had the idea of covering Joe Dassin’s song. By playing on the brass and embellishing it with heady “Oh, oh, ooooohh”, the orchestra makes the melody more attractive to the ferias audience before which it is accustomed to performing.
However, Pomarez, a town of 1,500 inhabitants wedged between Dax and Pau, also hosts the Coupe des Landes every year, a basketball competition that is certainly amateur, but recognized in the area. The sound is exported from the Gascon festivities to the courts of the South-West, to end up spreading, over time, to a good number of sports venues across the country.
“Everyone who has passed through Pau-Orthez (Jeep Elite club, division 1 basketball) knows the importance of the Coupe des Landes. So they obviously took a trip to Pomarez and heard this cover,” explains at the time the daily newspaper l’Equipe. Among these people, the National Technical Director (DTN) of French basketball at the time, Patrick Beesley. On the occasion of Euro 2015 organized in France, this native of Landes chose the song – without really consulting the players, moreover – as the official anthem of the Blues. And invites part of the orchestra to accompany the French team during the selection meetings, until the final phases at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium, in Villeneuve-d’Ascq (North), bringing together the public of the northern part of the country.
The Pomarézian fanfare capitalizes on the affair by officially releasing the cover, viewed so far more than 7 million times on YouTube. We now hear In the eyes of Emilie almost everywhere: from the Dunkirk Carnival, reports the voice of the Northto the edges of roundabouts and in the processions of demonstrators at the time of the yellow vest crisis in 2018. A banda aptly named, Les Gilets Jaunes, performs it in particular at the Pau motorway toll booth the same year.
Since this summer, the song has had a third life with the Rugby World Cup in France. A heady chorus, revisited with feria sauce, proclaimed in sports arenas: the ideal combo to become the unofficial anthem of the global oval meeting. Especially since the refrain had already started to invade the top 14 venues, with a few attempts recorded in particular at Stade Toulousain.
The Sony group sensed the rugby world’s craze for the hit, commissioning Lous Faïences, another Landes brass band, to produce a remix, released on September 8, 2023, the day of the France-New Zealand opening match. They are not the only ones: at the same time, a clip from the dancehall-electro-reggae group Collectif Métissé appears on Youtube, soberly titled, “In the eyes of Emilie, the clip of the official supporters’ anthem”, already viewed more than 300,000 times.
An improbable destiny reported to the ears of Vivien Vallay, its original composer, found by the Parisian : “When I see the images in the streets, in the bars with these people banging on the zinc… Arousing happiness is quite an indescribable feeling,” enthuses the author of the piece. The success of this song, which is being revived more than forty-five years later, proves that we have a role to play in the human hive.” Will it resonate enough to be adopted by the locker room of the XV of France, ideally until October 28, the day of the final?
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