Milord

After a stage accident in Stockholm on 28 May 1958, the French chanson singer Édith Piaf felt well enough to go on tour in July 1958. During a visit to a restaurant in Cannes, she submitted some ideas to her new boyfriend Georges Moustaki, from which he was to write songs. One of them included a love affair on a gloomy Sunday in London. Moustaki then wrote down the word "Milord" ("my lord") on a paper napkin. From this initial idea, he wrote the entire text of the play, in which the upper-class British milord is abandoned by his wife and comforted by a harbour girl. She asks him to stop crying ("ne pleurez pas, Milord"), but feels only a shadow on the street ("ombre de la rue"). Moustaki then asked Piaf's friend and main composer Marguerite Monnot for a corresponding melody. Later, Moustaki explained that the melody contrasts through its major and minor passages, alternating waltz, foxtrot and Charleston rhythms.