Melanie, "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma"

It's Bastille Day, but that's not a useful holiday for a rock critic to write about - there's not much in pop music concerned with the affairs of the French. There was one #1 hit sung in French - but I dobut anyone here is itching to hear "Dominique." A handful of songs have dropped in a line or two of French language - the Beatles' "Michelle" and ELO's "Hold On Tight" being perhaps the most notable examples - but I'll highlight a different one today.

"Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma" was a Top 20 hit for the New Seekers in 1970, but the original, written and sung by the ever barely hinged Melanie, is a superior reading. Melanie was incapable of delivering a line without sincerity, even en francais - at least, until "Brand New Key" made her a superstar and ruined her career. But back to "Song, Ma": It's a vague but evocative lament that a writer's words have been misappropriated - which makes one wonder how Melanie felt about its treatments in the hands of Ray Charles and Barbra Streisand and Puf'n'Stuf urchin Jack Wild. I'd like to think she approved of what they did to her song.