Brel was actually Belgian, not French (He lived in France though). For an almost exclusively French language singer-songwriter, his resume of who has covered his work is pretty impressive: Scott Walker, Judy Collins, Ray Charles, The Kingston Trio, David Bowie, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra among others.

Posted by Tahvo Parvianen on Wednesday, 03.16.11 @ 02:14am

Just clicked the wikipedia link and it claims in addition to the above I mentioned (and others, most notably Nina Simone) that Nirvana has also covered some of Brel's work. I wasn't aware of this, does anyone know what specifically they covered?

Posted by Tahvo Parvianen on Wednesday, 03.16.11 @ 02:17am

In addition to Ray Charles covering "If You Go Away" Neil Diamond also included a version of "If You Go Away" on his 1971 album "Stones" and Belinda Carlisle recorded the song in its original French on her French language album "Voila!" Terry Jacks took Brel's "Seasons in The Sun" all the way to #1 in early 1974.

Posted by Aaron O'Donnell on Wednesday, 03.16.11 @ 04:03am

erm, I think there's an issue with the ranking thing... I doubt this site will still be up in 7987 years.

Posted by GFW on Sunday, 09.2.12 @ 16:06pm