Alouette (song) - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

As this song is not under copyright, it is frequently used for the music of cartoons. For example, the two chefs in the classic Bugs Bunny short French Rarebit sing Alouette while inside an oven. Cartoon characters Pepé Le Pew and Loopy de Loop often sing or hum the tune. In one Tom and Jerry episode, "The Two Mouseketeers", Nibbles sings this while making a mini-sandwich near the joint of meat on the table. It is also sung in French in the Alvin and the Chipmunks TV series—but the English lyrics are changed to "if you love me tell that you love me, if you don't please tell me that you do". Antoine sings a bit of it early in the Sonic the Hedgehog SatAM episode, "Odd Couple". And in a television commercial for Eggo waffles, a talking waffle who thinks that he is French, walks around singing "Allouette, gentille Alloutte. Alloutte je te plumé-what."

It is also frequently used in television and videos. In a The Kids in the Hall sketch, Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley sing the song whilst paddling a canoe through an office trapping employees for their clothes. In the Barney video, "What a World We Share", Barney teaches the kids this song, while in France. It is also sung in the video "Barney's Talent Show" as a stage act. In Animaniacs, the lyrics for both "Alouette" and "Frère Jacques" are used as the dialogue for an incredibly boring French movie.

Ginger Grant (Tina Louise) sings the song, rather seductively, in the "Gilligan's Island" episode "The Matchmaker."

In the I Love Lucy episode "Paris at Last", Lucy sings the song, but she pronounces "Alouette" the wrong way.

Hogan's Heroes episode "Praise the Fuhrer and Pass the Ammunition", Corporal Louis LeBeau (Robert Clary) sings "Alouette" in order to prevent SS Colonel Deutsch (Frank Marth) from leaving a talent show set up by Colonel Robert E. Hogan (Bob Crane) on Colonel Wilhelm Klink's (Werner Klemperer) 50th Birthday.

The Television Program "Ghost Whisperer," in "Season 04, Episode 17" featured the song "Alouette". In this episode a female, earth-bound, spirit named "Greer Clarkson" was admitted to a psychiatric sanatorium. After her death, the sanatorium was shut down and the building was later used for an elementary school. While she was alive, she sang the song "Alouette" to calm and soothe her baby. When her baby died, she was admitted into psychiatric care. During stressful procedures and disturbing situations, she sang "Alouette" to try and calm herself. After she died, in the newly established school, she taught the song to a kindergarten class, to children who were still young enough to see her. In reality, her baby was actually alive all along. While she was in the sanatorium, a misguided ghost convinced her otherwise. This other ghost was a former doctor at the psychiatric hospital. In the end, she remembered the truth and was finally able to go into the "light" and be at peace.

In the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, Elvis Presley sings a swingy revision of "Allouette" entitled "Almost Always True."

The score of the 1968 film Stay Away, Joe includes three variations of "Alouette": a march variation, a harem-sounding variation, and a variation in which Elvis Presley changes the lyrics to "Mamie, Mamie, lovely little Mamie."

Félix Leclerc refers to Alouette! in his own song L'alouette en colère, part of his 1973 album of the same title.

The song is also used for parody and cultural reference. Comedian and performer Andy Kaufman used to sing his own derivative of Alouette entitled "Abodabee", which he claimed was a song "performed every harvest time in the islands of the Caspian Sea." A modified version of the song, referring to "lightning (fast) French alopecia, from the song of the same name", appears in "Call of the West", an episode of The Goon Show, sung by Hercules Grytpype-Thynne and Count Jim Moriarty. In François Bourgeon's The Twilight Companions, a group of Breton villagers sing the song as they merrily prepare to torture and kill a suspected witch. The series is set during the Hundred Years' War, prior to the French colonization of America, and Bourgeon hence argues its European origin. A revision of the song, written by French American Eric Beteille, replaces the word alouette with omelette: Omelette, gentille omelette, omelette, je te mangerais ... Je te mangerais les oeufs ... Je te mangerais fromage ... Je te mangerais jambon ... etc. It was parodied by Allan Sherman as "Al and Yetta", which is about an older couple watching television according to a strict routine. The chorus from the song Cruelty to Animals by Pernice Brothers is "Alouette, gentille alouette. Head to toe so thoroughly until we're both dismembered." And the children's record, Casper the Friendly Ghost: A Trip Through Ghostland, uses "Alouette" as the melodic basis for the song "Ghost Lesson".

Fans of Everton FC sing a version of the song, replacing the words with the names of those who won the double with the club in 1985, such as Neville Southall and Peter Reid. The chorus from the song is "Everton, oh we love Everton, oh Everton oh we love Everton".

The song has also been paid homage to in the 2010 song "Bang Bang Bang" by Mark Ronson (feat. MNDR and QTip), with the chorus hook being "Je te plumerai la tête" and "Alouette"; The video for the song also presents a young girl singing the opening lines to 'Alouette'.

The song and the call and response have been adapted to a rugby/drinking version. It is sung to a single female (men's club) or male (women's club) who functions as the "rugby queen" or "rugby king." The individual is subjected to verses containing derisive comments about his/her appearance. At the end of the song, the queen or king gets to dump beer all over the song leader.

In Cheryl Cole's single, "Promise This", she references the song Alouette, singing, "Alouette, -uette, -uette (X2); Deployer les ailes. Alouette, -uette, -uette (X2); Plumerai les ailes."

A version of the Delta Rhythm Boys' 1958 recording of the song is used in Target's 2012 "Color Changes Everything" commercial.

Alouette is also used in Adventure Time, when Jake sings it in the beginning of the Christmas Special, part 2.