Fabienne Thibeault: Le monde est stone

"Le monde est stone" ('the world is stone') is a song written and produced by Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon for the 1978 Canadian-French musical Starmania.  The song’s evocative metaphor of “stone” expresses the coldness, emotional emptiness, alienation, despair and futility of the futuristic society depicted in the play.  

The song was composed by Michel Berger with lyrics by Luc Plamondon. It was originally performed by Canadian singer Fabienne Thibeault on the Starmania concept album in 1978 and in its first stage production in 1979 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. She also performed three other songs in that production. 

Fabienne Thibeault (b. 1952) is a French-Canadian singer born in Montreal. In 1975, she won first prize at the International Song Festival at Granby. She has contributed many albums and rose to prominence in the role of Marie-Jeanne in the cast of Starmania in Quebec and Europe. She won two of Québec’s annual Félix Awards. 

Marie-Jeanne is the central narrator in the play. She is a downtrodden, automaton-like waitress at the Underground Café, a dive bar where the terrorist gang Etoiles noires hangs out.  She serves in the role of a Greek chorus guiding the audience through the turbulent events of the dystopian futuristic town Monopolis. She bears unrequited love for Ziggy, an aspiring disc jockey who draws inspiration from David Bowie and his fictional alter ego Ziggy Stardust. 

Le monde est stone is the stage production’s climactic song. Marie-Jeanne laments the state of the world. Chaos reigns in the capital city, Monopolis. Cristal, the glamorous host of the TV show Starmania, died in a massive explosion. As her body is carried away, Marie-Jeanne expresses despair and exhaustion at a world that has become depersonalized and as cold and bereft of human meaning as “stone.” Her head is exploding and the world seems completely turned around. Expressing sentiments of terminal despair, she searches for the sun in the middle of the night, and aspires only to numbness and oblivion.

NB:

se fair du cinéma is a common French idiomatic expression that means to “dramatize” or fantasize.