Lady Gaga and Edith Piaf Are Shocking on American Idol!

On this week's American Idol (the final four of the tenth season), I was shocked... not so much by the departure of James Durbin as by something Lady Gaga did.

I know, I am the first person ever to be shocked by something Lady Gaga has done. Actually, she shocked me twice, first when she gave good, down-to-earth commonsense advice to the contestants. Then, she amazed me when, in talking with apparent underdog Haley Reinhart, she referred to Edith Piaf.

Edith Piaf? On American Idol? I do not think I was as surprised by a reference to Edith Piaf (born Edith Giovanna Gassio, 1915-1963), a singer who has been dead almost a half century, as I was by a reference to a homely little woman whose gutsy, take-no-prisoners, over-the-top performances, with a voice for which the AI judges' word "pitchiness" could not be relevant.

In other words, just the opposite of performances those AI judges seem to favor. I realized that in spite of Piaf's monochromatic presentations, in a plain black dress, she has more in common with Lady Gaga than I would have ever imagined.

Edith Piaf, the "Little Sparrow"

Today, we bandy around words like legend and icon, but Piaf, known as the "Little Sparrow," is certainly one of the most iconic, legendary entertainers of the twentieth century. Even if you do not care for her songs, you might find her life, recounted in several biographies as well as in the 2007 bio-pic, La Vie En Rose, which bears the name of one of her most famous songs, worth knowing about.

Even if you do not recognize her name, you may have heard her in an eBay commercial (and in a Pepsi commercial in Japan) as well as in a great many films: The Bucket List, Saving Private Ryan, Inception, Bull Durham, Wall-E, 127 Hours, and Natural Born Killers, among many others. (If you know my writing, you know that you will also be able to hear her in some links in this article.)

Growing up in her grandmother's brothel, she went blind at age three and supposedly regained her sight after going on a pilgrimage financed by her grandmother's employees. By the time she was twenty, she had given birth to and experienced the death of her only child.

At the age of twenty-one, as she was beginning to gain some fame, she was accused of being involved in the murder of her manager. (There must be a lesson there for the would-be singing stars of AI..)

She helped advance the careers of French singers Yves Montand and Charles Aznavour. (There were rumors of more than just professional interest.) The fact of her infatuation with a married boxing star, who was killed in an airline crash, is more than rumor, as is her final marriage to a hair stylist two decades younger than she.

Her role during World War II (a collaborator with the Nazis or a member of the French Resistance) is still unclear.

Piaf's fame grew beyond France. In the United States, she appeared at Carnegie Hall and on The Ed Sullivan Show. In France, she made films as well as records and concert appearances. Her various attempts at rehabilitation, after becoming addicted to pain medicine after three almost-fatal car crashes, make her unfortunately contemporary.

Dying at age 47, she was buried in Paris's famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery, a bit of real estate that she shares with such other legendary figures as Judah P. Benjamin (first Attorney General of the Confederacy), Frederic Chopin, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (who did not invent the device named for him), Jim Morrison, and Oscar Wilde.

Ladies and gentlemen, Edith Piaf!

I have enjoyed listening to Piaf since I was in high school. But, being able to see her perform on YouTube videos adds a new dimension. Standing in place in her black dress, she acts up a storm with her face and hands. These are true music videos, with her restrained visual element which, in its way, is as distinctive as anything Lady Gaga does. If the Internet gave me nothing but Piaf's videos, I would be happy. Just to get you started...

"Non Je Ne Regrette Rien"- video
"Milord" (from The Ed Sullivan Show) - video
"La Vie En Rose" - video
"Les trois cloches" - video
"L'hymne a l'amour" - video

Ladies and gentlemen, Haley Reinhart!

Had Haley Reinhart ever heard of Edith Piaf? Did she look at some videos? Consider her performance of "I Who Have Nothing" (video). She brings a dramatic intensity to her singing that I do not remember in her previous performances. The way she holds her elbows against her body for most of her performance, often moving her hands in front of her body, seems distinctly Piaf-ian.

The week's assignment (if I may quibble) was to perform a song by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, but in fact, they just contributed English lyrics to the original Italian song. By the way, Piaf recorded one of their songs in French.

Reinharting, Gagaing, and Piafing

During his comments, Steven Tyler, referring to the dramatic quality of the performance, said that she had "Reinhardted." Oh, my, after Lady Gaga refers to Piaf, Steven Tyler tries to keep up with James Joyce (who turned Groucho Marx into a verb) by making a verb of Max Reinhardt, the great Austrian genius of theater and film. But, I remember the young lady's name. The verb was in fact "Reinharted," suggesting that Haley Reinhart was doing her own distinct thing. But, a little Gaga and a dash of Piaf certainly did not hurt.

Sources:

The Wikipedia article (here) sums up her life and legend. Her Internet Movie Database entry (here) gives a sense of her ongoing appeal on film and television, from 1936 until 2011. The YouTube search results page for Edith Piaf (here) returns over nine thousand videos.