France’s “Little Sparrow” would have been one hundred years old on Saturday, had she not died half a century ago, but in the years since her passing, Édith Piaf’s star has continued to rise inexorably, achieving the sort of world-permeating status of an actual star, a background radiation that we don’t know is keeping us warm.
“La Vie En Rose” may be the most covered French song of all time—the Gallic equivalent to “Yesterday”—with no one ever quite topping Piaf’s original version. Well, that’s not quite true: Louis Armstrong’s English cover runs in parallel with the original, putting the same elbow grease into the musical arrangement as Piaf did to her performance, with Armstrong’s trumpet every bit as distinctive as her voice.
Here are twenty of Édith Piaf’s best songs:
