I always knew, in a general way, that “If You Go Away” was based on Jacque Brel’s “Ne me quite pas,” but I had no idea what a pale shadow it was until I was sent down the YouTube rabbit hole by the season finale of The Leftovers, which featured Nina Simone’s brilliant take on the original. (Note that the clip below containing moments of the bloody aftermath of a suicide, so trigger warning.)

That led me to seek out a complete performance of Simone’s version …

… and eventually on to Brel’s own singing of the song he wrote in 1959 after a lover left him. (Based on my admittedly limited understanding of his actions, he seems to have deserved to have been left, and if that creates a subtext to the song which mars it for you, I’ll understand. Sometimes these things are hard to separate.)

Anyway, here’s Brel singing it, with an English translation in subtitles …

… after which I then gave a listen to Frank Sinatra singing “If You Go Away,” with lyrics by Rod McKuen.

I’d of course heard “If You Go Away” before, but it was only after listening to the two so closely together that I saw how the “translated” version had been drained of both passion and poetry.

Brel’s lyrics are filled with beautiful metaphors, such as—

We’ve often seen
the fire erupt again
from the ancient volcano
that was thought to be too old
They say there are
scorched lands
that yield more wheat
than a best april
And when the evening comes
and the sky is on fire
don’t the black and the red
blend together

McKuen threw all that out and came up with lyrics that are almost entirely new, creating what, when compared to the original, suddenly seems little more than a Hallmark card.

But if you stay, I’ll make you a night
Like no night has been, or will be again.
I’ll sail on your smile, I’ll ride on your touch,
I’ll talk to your eyes that I love so much.

And aside from the blanding of the lyrics, it occurs to me (and forgive me if I’m stating something everyone else already realized a long time ago) that the entire slant of the song has been changed. No longer does it tell the story of a person begging a lover to stay with a desperation that’s nearly unbearable to hear. It’s been transformed into one about a lover imagining what it would be like if a lover left someday.

“If you go away” is not the same thing as “don’t leave me.” Not the same thing at all.

This makes me wish English singers performed a true translation of the original, rather than McKuen’s watered down version. I haven’t yet found anyone doing this, but it’s something that should exist, and which I hope already does. Because Rod McKuen shouldn’t make English speakers lose out on the magic of Jacque Brel.