Belgian singer, songwriter, and actor Jacques Brel was one of the most important representatives of the classical French Chanson movement of the 1950s.

Although Brel endowed each original French word in this ballad with a poetry and sensualness that can hardly be conveyed in another language, other singers have covered the intense love song and musical plea numerous times, rendering it in more than 20 languages. It found its English-language version in the song by Rod McKuen, “If You Go Away,” while Marlene Dietrich recorded one of its German adaptations in 1963 as “Bitte geh nicht fort.”

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