Jacques Brel was the most intensely dramatic singer-songwriter in the history of popular music. In France, and in his native Belgium, audiences were held spellbound by the sheer ferocity of his performances and by deep, dark lyrics that seemed to widen the definition of what a popular song could be about. English translations of his songs such as If You Go Away and Seasons in the Sun have sold tens of millions of copies, in recordings by everybody from Frank Sinatra and David Bowie to Dusty Springfield, from Marc Almond and Sting to the brilliant young Scott Walker, who for a time dedicated himself to expressing Brel's elegant, uncompromising songs in English. Brel was an earthquake for French culture, and its shockwaves are still rippling across the world 50 years later. Ne Me Quitte Pas (If You Go Away) is Brel¹s most famous song and the beautiful, first recording is included here alongside his most powerful, Le Mort (My Death) and the singer-songwriters first hit, Quand on n'a que l'amour. Jacques Brel is alive and well and living on in his recordings, which burn as fiercely today, as he did when he first made them.