ABSTRACT
The playful allusion to Sigmund Freud in the title is a way of indicating that there are fundamental issues to be discussed in relation to the social and aesthetic functioning of popular song which are relevant to the appreciation of chanson. It is hard to know how to categorise a study: amongst other things, it will allude to questions of sociology, musicology, psychoanalysis, anthropology; and gesture towards a reception theory; when it could be the subject of a book in its own right. Song rhythms play on the fundamental patterns; they are often culturally associated with one of two contrasting rhythmic activities — working and dancing. So the songs form, of which chanson is just example, is simultaneously a very ancient and a very modern cultural product. Music seems to be more culturally conditioned than rhythm, more dependent on certain traditions perpetuated through musical education or community activity.
