UN JOUR UN TUBE (17/32) - All summer long, Europe 1 invites you to discover a song that marked the summer every day. Today, "Aline", by Christophe.

It is one of the greatest successes of Christophe, who died on April 16. But do you know the story of "Aline", a song written in fifteen minutes that quickly became a hit when it was released in 1965? 

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"Aline" could have been a fictional character, imagined by Christophe. But it did exist, as the singer revealed in 2016, more than fifty years after the song's release. Aline is Aline Natanovitch, a Polish woman who looked after the locker room of a club at night and who was a dental assistant on Boulevard du Montparnasse during the day, as Christophe told us. The singer would have had a little story with her and composed this sublime song in fifteen minutes. 

When Henri Salvador cried plagiarism

But not everyone liked this hit. Henri Salvador and one of his proteges, the singer Jacky Moulière, even hated him. According to them, "Aline" would be a plagiarism of "La romance", composed by the second and released a year before. The resemblance is such that Jacky Moulière, who attacks Christophe, wins at first instance, justice considering that this is plagiarism. But he loses in appeal in 1977 and Christophe then recovers all the rights to the song. 

Few artists have dared to take it back

Only two artists have rubbed shoulders with "Aline", not the easiest to resume with in particular this refrain where Christophe cries. When the singer wants to make a new duet album, he tells La Croix that several people had promised to sing it, without going all the way. For fear, perhaps, of confronting this monster of French song. 

Only Philippe Katerine agreed to participate, and the electro-pop group Thérapie Taxi in a more electro version.