This week on How I Met Your Mother featured the most background on "The Mother" that we've received to date, finishing with her singing a rendition of one of the most popular French songs of all time, La Vie en rose. It also happens to be a person favorite, so I decided to feature it, along with a little history, for FAV this week.
It was written in 1945 by Édith Piaf when, reportedly, she saw an American man and the line "Quand il me prend dans ses bras..." ("When he takes me in his arms...") came to her. Unfortunately, the team that helped her compose the song didn't think it would be very successful. Despite this, she decided to perform it a year later and it almost instantly became a hit. It went on to be a worldwide hit, selling over a million copies here in the US, and was performed by Piaf in a movie. You can read more from Wikipedia here. Here's Edith PIaf signing her most famous song:
Édith Piaf came to be considered a national diva in France, with numerous other fantastically popular songs. In 2008, Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for Best Actress for playing Édith Piaf in the movie, La Vie en Rose. You can watch a clip of Cotillard's performance as Piaf singing Non, je ne regrette rien here.
Unsurprisingly, La Vie en rose has been performed by many artists. My favorite is probably Madeleine Peyroux's, but the most famous is probably by Andrea Bocelli:
And finally, we have this more humble, but perhaps more heartwarming version on this week's HIMYM which you can view here, but I unfortunately can't embed.