“Ma belle-mère est meilleure que la tienne!”
Click here to listen to the song.
Making of
Around September 2024, I received a note saying that I picked my mother-in-law’s name for a Christmas gift this year. We don’t all buy gifts in Vero’s family, we pick names.
I was sitting there thinking about what I could get her and then AMBITION struck and I thought “Hey! I could write a song for her!”
What was I thinking?! Such a hard task to accomplish. But at least I had four months to do it. Plus, I could back out and just buy something off of Amazon if it didn’t work out.
With creating a song about belle-mères you can really go two ways:
- Something that talks about how much you don’t like your belle-mère
- Something that talks about how much you like your belle-mére
Lately I’ve been wanting to shift my songwriting to funnier songs.
I did attempt a song about how much we don’t like belle-mères. Here’s a lifting of the curtain on my songwriting process:
While I enjoyed the thought of writing a song about how everyone doesn’t like their belle-mère, it didn’t really apply to me because I actually like my belle-mère!
I was having a hard time figuring out where to go next and Véro helped me figure out that I should talk about how my belle-mère is better than others. Hey, now that’s something I could work with!
I don’t find creating lyrics as a hard task but I do find it hard to come up with a good melody and music for a song. I just wait for the moment to strike.
AND STRIKE IT DID! One morning I was taking a walk and figured out the music for the song. Véro had already come up with the funniest line for the chorus so I was playing around with that along with some music. Luckily I had my phone with me to record the idea for the music.
Cutting it close…this video was taken a month after my idea for making a song and now I had two months left!
Then I worked a bit on how the music should work on a guitar. I have no idea why I had to record this in Sierra’s room. Maybe it was the only spot with some peace and quiet?
Here I am working out how the verse might sound:
Now at this point, it was very clear that I couldn’t cut it at writing french lyrics. So I asked for Véro and Andréane for some help. It was a fun exercise…”Come up with lyrics that talk about how good your belle-mère is but how awful their belle-mère is.” We had a good laugh when we would come up with some good lines. Some worked, some didn’t.
Here’s an ending I worked out and completely forgot about when recording the song! Woops! Haha.
As you can see when creating a song, I rely on the video camera a lot to remind me of how I sing and play certain parts. It’s interesting to go back and watch videos to see how some ideas were abandoned or how I sang parts differently here and there.
This final video was pretty much what I envisioned the song to be before I sat down and recorded it. There were still a few verses that are different from the final version but the song is pretty much there.
Recording notes:
- Recorded mid-November to mid-December 2024.
- Recorded acoustic guitar and main vocals via the Tascam L12 mixing board with the Play Acoustic vocal processor attached. A bit of compression and reverb on the track via the mixing board. I wish I marked down the settings because it became a pain in the ass to try and re-record a line without that setup!
- Harmonies were triggered on the Play Acoustic High Low vocal preset
- Added all other instruments via my new midi controller which was a fun project
Lyrics:
Ma belle-mère me canne des bettes
Aussi elle plie Toutes mes bobettes
La tienne a juste Un coeur frette
J’aime passer du temps avec
La belle-mère à watcher Star Trek
Mais avec la tienne c’est comme un
vrai car wreck
Ma belle-mère
est meilleure que la tienne
J’entends dire que la tienne
est une chienne
Elle prend soin
De tous mes besoins
Ta belle-mère a juste l’air
D’un babouin
Ma belle-mère elle m’a à coeur
Elle remplit mon congélateur
La tienne a toujours
Besoin De l’extincteur
Elle cuisine pour m’faire plaisir
Elle attend avant de se servir
La tienne s’bourre la face
Avant de s’enfuir
Ma belle-mère
est meilleure que la tienne
J’entends dire que la tienne
est une chienne
Elle prend soin
De tous mes besoins
Ta belle-mère a juste l’air
D’un babouin
Il faut que je m’arrête
Belle-mère n’est pas parfaite
Elle peut lâcher des gros gros pêtes!
Ma belle-mère aime me plaire
Elle nettoie le frigidaire
La tienne a aucun
savoir-faire
Ma belle-mère emmène les p’tits au Tim
La tienne commet les pires des crimes
Il faut parfois que tu
Les réaniment
Ma belle-mère
est meilleure que la tienne
J’entends dire que la tienne
est une chienne
Elle prend soin
De toux mes besoins
Ta belle-mère a juste l’air
D’un babouin
Ma belle-mère
est meilleure que la tienne
J’en prends soin
Parce-qu’elle en vaut
la peine