“I wrote the words and the music in a 16th Arrondissement hotel in Paris thinking about Montreal,” Jean-Pierre Ferland once recalled about Je reviens chez nous, a song he wrote on Christmas day in 1967 and has since become a true French classic. “I was homesick,” he explained. “You don’t write a song like this without a reason.” With every listen, Je reviens chez nous still evokes a tremendous emotion, including nostalgia and the yearning to be back home amongst one’s own. Made famous in France by Ginette Ravel, the song ranked second at the 1968 Sopot International Song Festival in Poland and won the much-coveted Charles Cros Academy Prize in Paris, France.
The times and fashions were changing in his homeland, and in March of 1968, Jean-Pierre Ferland returned from Paris and sang Je reviens chez nous for the first time to an emotional Quebec audience. That same year, the song won the Grand prix du festival du disque in Quebec.
Je reviens chez nous represents the end of an era in Jean-Pierre Ferland’s songwriting career as a chansonnier. The following year, he drastically altered his sound, in keeping with the wind of change that was sweeping Quebec’s pop music, and following the psychedelic movement led by Robert Charlebois.
