Bonjour ! ¡Hola! Hallo! Ciao! This Friday 21st June is la Fête de la Musique – a celebration of music throughout France. To join in the festivities, we’re launching a new Coffee Break feature – ‘Tune for Tuesday’! Every week our team will select and share a song with you to introduce you to some new styles of music from around the world, while helping you develop your language skills.

Our first ‘Tune’ is a French classic, which you may recognise from its English version. The song is La Mer by Charles Trenet, who is often considered one of the greats of French popular music. This song has been translated into many languages and at the time of Trenet’s death in 2001, it was estimated that there were over 4000 different recordings of it! Have a listen to the song throughout the week – on your way to work or while making your morning coffee – and see how much you can understand by the end of the week.

Each week we will add our Tune for Tuesday to our brand-new Spotify and YouTube playlist to build up a collection of songs from all over the world and in many different languages. Scroll down to follow the playlist and keep up to date!

We’d love to hear if you enjoyed listening to La Mer in the comments below. Happy listening!