I Wish You Love (Que reste-t-il de nos amours) - Trenet-Chauliac
I Wish You Love - Charles Trenet
"Que reste-t-il de nos amours ?" ( What Remains of Our Loves?) is a French popular song, with music by Léo Chauliac and Charles Trenet and lyrics by Charles Trenet. A version of the song with English lyrics entitled "I Wish You Love" is recognizable by the opening line "I wish you bluebirds, in the spring".
The song is best known to English-speaking audiences as "I Wish You Love", with new lyrics by American composer and lyricist, Albert Askew Beach (1924-1997): "I Wish You Love" was introduced in 1957 by Keely Smith as the title cut of her solo debut album, I Wish You Love, and was one of Smith's signature songs. Smith's debut album otherwise consisted of standards. She later recalled: "[when] we sat down to select the songs [the record producer] Voyle Gilmore...played a bunch of standards [then] said: 'I want to play you a really pretty French song [...] it won't mean nothing and you won't do it in the album but I just thought I'd play it for you' and he played 'I Wish You Love'. So, at the end of him playing all these songs [...] I said: 'Babe, I'll sing any 11 songs y'all want me to but I want to sing 'I Wish You Love'."
I Wish You Love - Trenet, Chauliac
"I Wish You Love" is an English remake of a 1943 French song "Que reste-t-il de nos amours" by Léo Chauliac and Charles Trenet. It was introduced by Keely Smith in 1957 with a Billy May arrangement in American rhumba style and was a hit for Gloria Lynne in 1964; both performances can be found on Youtube as well as a swing performance by Nancy Wilson (also with a Billy May arrangement) from 1960. There are lots of other performances as well.
When sung, the AABA 32-bar form is "always" preceded by a 16-bar verse sung ad lib. This presents a problem for iReal Pro users when the the verse and refrain are included in a chord chart. There is, in fact, a chord chart for this tune on the forum that includes both. However, I find this chart hard to use because it is both difficult and unreliable for me to try to start a chord chart somewhere in the middle on my iPad Mini (I also have trouble with selecting bars in edit mode, so maybe it's me or the iPad). Thus, I have re-edited this chord chart to exclude the verse and have presented it below. I have also made some edits to the chord changes and added a tag ending.
I hope you enjoy performing this tune that was so popular in the 1960s. It is too lovely to be forgotten. I perform this tune with the Latin - Cuba: Bolero style at 90 bpm.
I Wish You Love (no verse) - Trenet and Chauliac
