Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?

I spend a lot of my time listening to music. I’ve listened to lots of songs and I’ve even heard some of them more than once. So, I know the lyrics of songs that I like and even some that I don’t care for. Nowadays it’s no trouble tracking down a recording and not too hard to find its text. Of course, it wasn’t always like this. When I was growing up, I’d no access to mp3s, compact discs, YouTube or most of the other methods of listening to music that now exist. I didn’t even have compact discs because they hadn’t been invented and there were no records or cassettes in my house when I was young. The only place I heard music was on the radio and that was mostly controlled by what my mother was listening to. Occasionally, a song would grab my attention but it would be gone in a few minutes as I had no way of recording it. One song I heard at this time that aroused my curiosity was sung by a guy with a dodgy French accent about an intriguing woman with exotic tastes in men and holiday destinations. I found out a few years later that the song was called Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? and it was performed by its writer, Peter Sarstedt. The song is mainly set in France and even features a typically French-sounding accordion that adds some colour to the constant strum of the acoustic guitar. The song was a 1969 number one hit in the UK, but didn’t do so well in France. This is not such a surprise as Sarstedt isn’t actually French. He was born in India and moved to England with his family when he was a teenager