Start The Week With Music ...
... ... and follow me to "where gigolo and gigolette can take a kiss without regret so they forget their broken dreams".
This is a tune originally written by Harry Warren for Sidney Lanfield's 1934 film "Moulin Rouge". In the movie, it is performed by an expensively tarted up Constance Bennett, complete with fake French accent and accompaniment by a swooning chorus. Since then, "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams” has been interpreted by a number of greats, among them Tony Bennett, Kay Starr, Billy Eckstine, Diana Krall and the inimitable Marianne Faithfull.
The version I have picked here is by Singaporean singer Jacintha Abisheganaden. I like it because it has a wonderfully decadent rainy-September-evening-1955-in-Paris feel about it, an air of melancholy timelessness. If that represents an attempt to gloss over the sadness of what is described, it only succeeds in making this sense of isolation and loneliness more palpable.
"The Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the opening track of Jacintha's 2001 album Lush Life (Groove Note – GRV1011-2).