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This song is part of a playlist: Best French Songs 1980s with English Subtitles
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Les Lacs du Connemara, sung by Michel Sardou was a big hit in France in the 80's. It is even today a song played at soccer, weddings or any other happy celebration and sung by people who were not even born at the time. The reason is the unbelievable rhythm and pace of the song. Strangely enough, there has not been any English subtitles added to this song about Ireland. Here is a first attempt.

The info below is from Wikipedia:
LES LACS DU CONNEMARA:
Les Lacs du Connemara is a song by Michel Sardou created in 1981 on the album that will later be referred to by the same title.
The song was written and composed in Saint-Georges-Motel (Eure, France), in the property of Michel Sardou. Having suffered from the heat following a long journey, Jacques Revaux's Sequential Prophet synthesizer sounded like a bagpipe, which gave Michel Sardou the idea of writing a Scottish song. As neither he nor Pierre Delanoe knew Scotland, Delanoe went to look for documentation, found nothing on Scotland, but came back with a tourist brochure on Ireland and the lakes of Connemara, which neither him nor Michel Sardou had ever visited.
The text is ultimately inspired by the film The Quiet Man by John Ford, evoking an Irish wedding and leaving the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the background.
It also evokes various elements of Irish culture, such as:
- wild landscapes made up of moors, sometimes inhospitable;
- a very cloudy and windy temperate climate, due to the proximity to the Atlantic;
- the lakes (lough), numerous on the island and renowned in Connemara;
- town names: Limerick (where there is a granite church), Tipperary, Ballyconneely, Galway;
- surnames (like, Connor, Flaherty from the Ring of Kerry) and first names (like Maureen, Sean);
- the Gaels, an ethnolinguistic group from Ireland and Scotland;
- Oliver Cromwell, English soldier and politician who conquered the island between 1649 and 1653, causing massacres and making this episode one of the darkest in the history of Ireland;
- Connemara ponies;
- religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants;
- the partition of the island into two distinct entities: the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland;
- the wars of independence waged against England, punctuating the history of the island for centuries.
Deeming the song too long (more than 6 minutes), Michel Sardou did not want to release it. It was Jacques Revaux who convinced him to keep it.
Public reception:
The 45 rpm comprising Les Lacs du Connemara and Je viens du Sud has sold more than a million copies in France. On December 5, 1981, it took 1st place.
On November 15, 2011, on the occasion of the song's 30th anniversary, Paul Kavanagh, Irish Ambassador to Paris, symbolically hands over the keys of Connemara to Michel Sardou.
MICHEL SARDOU:
Son of comedians Fernand and Jackie Sardou, and grandson of Valentin Sardou, Michel Sardou is the descendant of a family tradition in the entertainment world since the middle of the 19th century. Author or co-author of numerous successes, he is one of the most popular French singers.
After a difficult start at Barclay Records, he began to gain notoriety in 1967 with Les Ricains, especially as the song's censorship drew attention to him. However, it was not until the early 1970s that his career got a real second start. He then chained the successes and became in a few years one of the artists most appreciated by the public. If from the 1990s, the hits became less numerous, his popularity remained intact and he often set attendance records during his tours and Parisian concerts. Since the end of the 2000s, he has given more and more importance to his activities as a theatre actor.
Although he rejects the term "committed singer", the many looks he casts on society have divided the media class and commentators on many occasions, triggering several controversies in the 1970s and attracting the wrath of numerous associations, in particular the Women's Liberation Movement. Sardou continued to write and sing songs which courted controversy. "Le France" was an open criticism of the government for selling a luxury cruise liner, a national treasure; "Je Suis Pour" featured his views on giving the death penalty to child murderers. However, these controversies never affected his success with the public.
Michel Sardou has recorded, in fifty five years of career, 26 studio albums and 18 live albums, bringing together a total of more than 350 songs, and received five Victoires de la Musique. He has sold more than 100 million records which ranks him among the biggest French record sellers.

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