THEO HAKOLA - "La Vie est belle"

video featuring Roser Montlló Guberna
song from the album "TRUTH and COMMON DECENCY" (2025)
Lou Gala, Raphaèle Bouchard: backing vocals
Tatiana Mladenovitch: drums, animals
T. Hakola: vocals, guitars, bass, organ...
contact/info: http://theohakola.com

LA VIE EST BELLE

La vie est belle, life is grand
I want to hang on to it as long as I can
Elle est belle, la vie, a beautiful thing
Oh life, ‘tis of thee that I now sing

Life is a blast, oh, how I do love it
How I want it to keep on a-going
Want the blood of those I love to ever be quick
safe from harm, forever warm and flowing

Got me all the clothes I need to wear
and almost all the air I need to breathe
Immune to despair, I no longer much care
‘bout any untrue loves I did once bereave

I’m hardly ever hungry and rarely too cold
I sleep where I want and I’ll never grow old
Oh, I love life more than I could ever say
No chance in hell I’ll give it up one day

La vie est belle, life is grand
I want to hang on to it as long as I can
Elle est belle, la vie, a beautiful thing
Ô la vie, ‘tis of thee that I now sing

Like a new pair of shoes, this song’s a fix for the blues
Like mad waves of booze and cascades of good news
Blissfully impervious to inequality exploding
it’s cheerfully oblivous to our moral fiber eroding

This song won’t be decrying MAGA taking root,
a waterscape dying or Russia’s rape of Ukraine
This song won’t stoop to smite any low-hanging fruit
or give a hoot ‘bout the plight of the old whooping crane

And while my homeland auditions for a nazi wet dream
I’ll track the gods and magicians of some basketball team
As for my likeness in the attic that’s now a decaying meme,
an aging cliché queen, well, I’ll keep it at bay with a hand… from my old friend Jim Beam

I don’t have love or even a dog, but at least don’t have to believe in God
and it’s not the first time and won’t be the last that I pop that rhyme as I try to cast
a net over all the good that sparkles, any virtue that makes us glow
and reel it in to warm the cockles and bones of my impious soul
Yes, I’m reaching for all that might be inspiring, striving to blithely forget
how our mother earth is now expiring and how her killers we all do abet

La vie est belle, life is grand
I’ll keep it in my clutches as long as I can
Elle est belle, la vie, a beautiful thing
Oh, life, ‘tis of thee that I now sing

La vie est belle, life is grand
How deep it touches, more than I can stand
Like a bell, does she, in my heart now ring
God, let her be forever and ever… let her be never-ending