ABSTRACT
A brave attempt to provide an inclusive coverage of the second half of the twentieth century is provided by Lucien Rioux, for many decades the chanson critic on the well-known weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. One of the more obvious analogies for chanson that springs to mind is that of cinema, and particularly French cinema with its high cultural profile and tradition of auteur directors. While no one can, deny the importance of chanson as a perennial and highly significant feature of French culture, it remains a problem to decide what is the best way to write about it, and in what terms to evaluate it. There is a limited amount of sociological analysis of the institution of chanson. The dominance of male singer-songwriter figures is a fact which demands to be analysed, as does the small number of women singers who write their own material, whilst the vast majority of them remain interpretes, singing other people's compositions.
