Eddy Mitchell in our political winter

Published on

December 20, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.

With his latest album, “Amigos”, Eddy Mitchell could, without seeming to touch it, revive a political melancholy whose warmth helps us face the coldness of the present time.

We are living in times of Macronian grayness announcing the coldness of the extreme right in a global landscape that is already fairly frozen (Hungary, Italy, Argentina, United States, etc.). Two mediocre five-year terms of a president adept at “beautiful speeches”, from the Pantheon to Notre-Dame, more than a policy endowed with meaning and inspiration, increased the probabilities of access to power of the National Rally. Just before leaving aside for a brief moment, during the end-of-year holidays, this “post-fascist” situation, or what Lionel Jospin characterized during the France-Inter morning show on December 16, 2024 as “counter-revolutionary risks”however, a grain of sand appeared.

This is the release of Eddy Mitchell's fortieth studio album, “Amigos” (in stores since November 20, 2024), which is likely to give new color to our desires for utopia. But these melancholic colors do not ignore the tests of time, our errors, our failures and our scratches.

Melancholy, in the self-critical irony that it allows itself with experience and with itself, avoids the blind and blinding mythologization of hopes, conducive to narcissistic illusions as well as dogmatic, even totalitarian, political excesses. It must be said that to inject us with a new dose of sound “vaccine of skepticism”Schmoll has enlisted the help of other great melancholy dreamers in his new opus, such as Alain Chamfort, William Sheller and Alain Souchon.

“I forgot to forget it”… the utopian elsewhere

Eddy's relationship to childhood dreams and romantic promises has been questioning us for a long time: what have we done with our personal lives and our common world? From 1966, the song “I forgot to forget” stirred up the memory of the disappointed expectations of this yesterday that was both so close and so distant.

“I forgot to forget it/Because this unfinished dream/Was beautiful and stupid to cry about”. “Dead forever”, “this unfinished dream” ? Not quite: “You, my heart, remain in your place”… Buried feelings come to the surface. In love or in politics. Can we be satisfied with the succession of dreary politicians: Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande, Macron…? Not to mention the one who gave a literary coating to the abandonment of a more global meaning to daily political action: Mitterrand. And all this to lead, probably, to the victory of a politics of resentment, authoritarian, nationalist and xenophobic! Just commenting on each other's tactical moves, their technocratic intelligences dried out and running idle, like watching a football match on TV? Give up “this love that pride has killed”, “no longer dream” ? A personal and collective impotence, which gives itself easy pretexts, changing depending on the individual: “the evil Macron”, “the evil Hollande”, “the evil neoliberalism”, “the evil Mélenchon”, etc.

In 1981, at the political moment of hope… quickly showered in 1983, Eddy bounced back on the necessity of the impossible dream with “Poor baby doll”.

A young girl, “late adolescence”, “promises to never dream again”. “His parents are nothing but two strangers/They have forgotten/That they loved each other so much”. “Life has overtaken them”life has overtaken us, life has overtaken me… So leave, but to where? “So what if there's no America/Everything but not staying/There's definitely a California/Somewhere to go”. Even if elsewhere does not exist, we need to walk towards it, to restore a global meaning to our lives and our world. “Even if America is very far away/Leaving is getting closer to it”. The utopian elsewhere, without blissful optimism, with even the experience of disenchantment anchored to the body, like a horizon that helps us to walk, individually and collectively.

“In love differently”: the adventure is not over!

After the setbacks, the impasses and the wounds, with our undisguised scars, Eddy's latest album invites us, not to bury our dreams in adapting to the world as it is, but to dream differently. To music by Alain Chamfort, ” Lover “ tenderly cradles our sentimental melancholy and, beyond that, the possibility of a melancholic utopia.

“In love differently/In love yet/In love now/Like old children/In love differently/In love just as much/In love now/From the same fire differently”. Life has at times knocked us down, politics has disappointed us, we have been disappointing in love and in politics, not only because of our lovers, not only because of “those above” and other “bad guys”. In “Humanism and Terror”, in 1947, the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty asks: “Isn’t there a curse on living together? » But warding off this curse is not impossible for Schmoll, despite our wounds and bumps: “In love yet/In love now”…

The adventure cannot, must not, end in fatalistic impotence: “The same childish eye/The same intoxication of another grape”. Because, as another title of ” Friends “ to music by William Sheller this time, “Adventure is never far away”.

The spirit of adventure draws on childhood dreams. When the feeling of escape appears so palpable: “And Treasure Island is a world/Made of pirates and sailors”. Something there can maintain open paths between our naively exploratory childhoods and our adult lives tempted by the resignation, even the cynicism of those to whom we do not do it. “But adventure is never far away/In the minds of these children/It resists time, all winds/In the hearts of the oldest”. Adventure resists to breathe life into our inner feelings and our intimate projects as well as shared perspectives of emancipation.

Would that be fucked up? Too late ? We would definitely be Sarkozysed (with an electronic bracelet!), Dutchized, macronized, Melenchonized… before being Lepenized or Bardella-ized? Eddy the wise points out other possibilities, but without getting rid of a certain pessimistic ballast, melancholy. In the show “le monde d’Elodie” on Franceinfo, he answers the question on December 2, 2024, “do you like the world we live in today? – “I prefer this world to that of my youth. » No “it was better before” reaction from Eddy! Eddy doesn't rhyme with Finky. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Schmoll!

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