Charles Aznavour’s ‘Hier Encore’ Trends Thanks To Bad Bunny Sample And Sync
The song was sampled by Bad Bunny and featured in the television show ‘Lupin.’
Iconic French singer Charles Aznavour’s “Hier Encore” has found a new audience thanks to a number of key placements and samples of late.
The song was just sampled on “Monaco,” which is a fan-favorite track on the new Bad Bunny album Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana. The song’s title translates to “Just yesterday” or “Not so long ago,” and was composed by Georges Garvarentz. Aznavour wrote the song himself, which was originally released in September 1964. Aznavour also recorded the song with Elton John for his Duos album from 2008.
Additionally, the song is featured at the end of season three of the hit Netflix show Lupin. The series is about Assane Diop, a “gentleman thief” who was an orphan and is looking to avenge his father’s death.
While Aznavour may be finding a new audience thanks to Lupin and Bad Bunny, the star has been a celebrated singer for decades.
The world-famous performer, born to Armenian immigrants, sold more than 180 million records and featured in over 60 films. He was arguably best known for the 1974 hit he co-wrote with frequent collaborator Herbert Kretzmer, the much-covered “She,” by which time he had already been recording for some 25 years.
The song was later famously performed by Elvis Costello in the opening credits of Richard Curtis’ film Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, and returned to the UK top 20 as a result. Such was the popularity of Aznavour’s version that he recorded it not just in the original French (“Tous Les Visages de l’Amour”) and English, but in French, German, and Italian.
Aznavour recorded more than 1,200 songs in seven different languages and performed in 94 countries. Dubbed “France’s Frank Sinatra”, he wrote his own songs on taboo subjects and a wide array of topics.
The artist’s huge worldwide following as a performing artist extended to the United States. The New York Times wrote in a 1978 review of his Carnegie Hall show in New York, a venue he had already been playing for over 20 years: “He is an actor, a mime, as much as he is a singer, those huge eyes serving as expressive an introduction to a song as a musical passage might. And he is almost a dancer in the way he uses his body, the jaunty walk on the balls of his feet, the graceful movement backward and forward, the clutching, hugging, swaying that become motivating elements of his songs.”
