External links
- Brelitude Jacques Brel's covers website
"If You Go Away" is Rod McKuen's English-language version of the 1959 Jacques Brel song "Ne me quitte pas". Created as part of a larger project to bring Brel's work into English, "If You Go Away" is considered a pop standard and has been recorded by many artists, including Greta Keller, for whom some say McKuen wrote the English lyrics. [1]
The complex melody is partly derivative of classical music: the "But if you stay..." passage comes from Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6.
A sad but hopeful ballad, the lyrics are told from the perspective of someone telling their lover how much they would be missed if they left. This is described in vivid, hyperbolic terms, such as "there'll be nothing left in the world to trust". If the lover stays, the narrator promises them both devotion and good times ("I'll make you a day / Like no day has been, or will be again"). Some lines show that the narrator is speaking to the lover as they are already leaving, or considering doing so ("Can I tell you now, as you turn to go..."). The lines "If you go, as I know you will" and later "...as I know you must" make clear that despite the narrator's protests, the lover's leaving is inevitable.
McKuen's version is significantly different from the original Brel lyric, as it is based around contrasting what would happen "if you go away" with what could happen "if you stay".
In the original French version, the singer begs for his lover not to leave him and is more supplicant and almost self-humiliating (the title "Ne me quitte pas" translates as "Do not leave me"). The last image of the French version is significant: although the McKuen version has lyrics that come close to the original sentiment, the French lyrics are far bleaker (as is the song in general): "Let me become the shadow of your shadow, the shadow of your hand, the shadow of your dog" (lit. translation of the original) as opposed to "I'd have been the shadow of your shadow if I thought it might have kept me by your side" (English lyrics).
The English version omits a section of the original version in which the singer begs his lover to give their relationship a second chance, using examples derived from the natural world: "I will tell you of those lovers who saw their hearts catch fire twice;" "Fire has often been seen gushing out of an ancient volcano we thought too old"; "There are, people say, burnt lands that produce more wheat than the best of Aprils".
Many other artists have recorded the song.
The song has also been featured in films. Joaquin Phoenix recorded a cover for Joker: Folie à Deux (2024).
Nick Currie, better known as Momus, returned to Brel's original song and translated it as "Don't Leave" in 1986, released initially on the Jacques EP and then on an expanded reissue of the album Circus Maximus. This was lyrically closer to the original, notably using the formulation "Me, I'll ..." (common as "moi, je ..." in French but rarely used in English).
