Listening to the opening song of Alain Bashung’s 2008 album Bleu pétrole, “Je t’ai manqué,” without knowing any of the context behind it makes it play like a conventional singer/songwriter track, albeit with a slight rock bend and even jangle pop piano chords mixed in for good measure. The choruses, which go, “Je t’ai manqué / Pourquoi tu me visais” (translated as “You missed me / Why did you take aim at me?”), makes it play like a cliched revenge song, cinched by the electric guitar leading out of the chorus at the 0:45 mark, a spaghetti Western soundbite that takes the words “miss” and “aim” to their literal extremes. This is fight music for folkies!
The context is that Bashung already knew he had lung cancer, and Bleu pétrole would end up being his last album before he passed away on March 14, 2009. And knowing this reframes the song, and stark lyrics like “Tout est brutal” (translated as “Everything is brutal”) and “Tout est extreme” (“Everything is extreme”) hit much harder. “Tout à l’horizontal / Nos envies, nos amours, nos héros”: “Everything is at the horizon / Our desires, our loves, our heroes.” To Bashung, no doubt, everything must have felt like they were on the horizon.
The context also changes the hook: the subject “You” is no longer some unnamed, unseen foe, but it becomes all of us listeners, and dare I say everyone in France: Bashung was considered the country’s most vital rock songwriter after Serge Gainsbourg (whom Bashung had covered on L’Homme à Tête de Chou – “The Man With the Head of Cabbage” – in full just two years prior, which would be released posthumously). After his passing, the title words and central hook of “Je t’ai manqué” sounds hyper-literal. “You miss me?” He asks as the song plays through, over and over.
When I first got into Alain Bashung, I didn’t even know of his importance, nor of his death until many years later; “Je t’ai manqué” was just a bouncy song with a catchy electric guitar part. Listening to it after learning more about Bashung, and the song gains an added grace. I can’t help but compare it to J Dilla’s “Stop!” from the beloved Donuts, wherein a sample of Dionne Warwick goes “You’re going to want me back…in your arms / You’re going to need me.” Donuts was similarly created with the artist’s impending death in mind, and it’s with that context that Dionne Warwick’s words feel like J Dilla speaking directly to his audience. And so when Bashung speak-sings “Je t’ai manqué,” it feels like a question, in an-joke: “You miss me?” To which I can only answer, yes.
