Pourquoi d'abord ? [English translation]

Hey Renaud, how come

you wear a leather jacket1?

Now tell me,

are you a yobbo2 for real?

A leather jacket looks good in my book.

Besides, it keeps me warm.

And let me tell you, buddy:

it scares off the bourgeois!

Why d'you want to scare the bourgeois

in the first place?

If they was3 a real menace,

it's we who'd be4 scared of them.

Their stupidity is a real menace.

Besides, don't forget that they go

hand in hand with the power that be,

the cops and the priests5!

What's with

the priests now?

It's thanks to them we have

a Good Lord, innit?

Pah! Your Good Lord died long ago

together with Jesus, on the cross.

They stuck a few pins in him

and he buggered off!

You really got no respect.

What do you like, anyway,

except your girl and your buddies6,

assuming you got any!

I love life, macaroni and cheese7,

accordion8 and beer,

and smoking a good old fag9

while listening to Bruant10

You talk a lot of balls.

For a start, your ciggy

smells rather funny.

I bet it's a joint!

Give me a break now

or I'll send you back to your folks

without even asking a ransom.

You're getting on my tits.

Your song will never work anyway.

It doesn't even rhyme

and it lacks a chorus.

Not mainstream enough, you oaf!

True, it's a bit botched.

It's because I had only

nine songs for my LP

and I needed ten.

1. "black jacket". Mandatory garb for a young (wannabe) thug of the 80's2. "loubard" is quite dated. A French pre-rap era ancestor of the hoods, evolved from the UK teddy boys and US greasers3. A classic pitfall for French learners, this wrong conditional is often used by small kids. The proper form would be "s'ils étaient..."4. more purposely broken French. Small kids can confuse "nous" with "on" and use the wrong person of the verb ("aurait" instead of "aurions")5. lit. "(measly) parish priest", the word can be as insulting as "pigs" for cops in the mouth of a priest-basher6. terms like "skank" and "homies" belonged to a distant future in the 80's7. technically "pasta shell"8. "valse musette" is a musical genre from late 19th century, associated with proletarian and anarchist subculture of the era9. "goldo" is an affectionate nickname for "gauloise", a famous French brand of cigarettes.

Social justice zealots can go to hell and stay there.10. a famous anarchist singer of the late 19th century

• Artist:Renaud
• Album:Marche à l'ombre (1980)