Édith Piaf 1915–2015

Édith Piaf is almost universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Still revered as an icon decades after her death, "The Sparrow" served as a touchstone for virtually every chansonnier, male or female, who followed her. Her greatest strength wasn't so much her technique, or the purity of her voice, but the raw, passionate power of her singing. (Given her extraordinarily petite size, audiences marveled all the more at the force of her vocals.) Her style epitomized that of the classic French chanson: highly emotional, even melodramatic, with a wide, rapid vibrato that wrung every last drop of sentiment from a lyric. She preferred melancholy, mournful material, singing about heartache, tragedy, poverty, and the harsh reality of life on the streets; much of it was based to some degree on her real-life experiences, written specifically for her by an ever-shifting cast of songwriters.

10 CD box set celebrating the life and work of the legendary French chanteuse Édith Piaf, who would have been 100 years old in 2015. The set includes sixteen original albums recorded between 1946 and 1962 and many of her most famous chansons. As Piaf's friend Jean Cocteau said of this unique artist who sang with an unreserved intensity about life and love, particularly unhappy love to which she herself was no stranger, "there was never an Édith Piaf before her and there will surely never again be one after her".