“Ne Me Quitte Pas” is a 1959 chanson written and composed by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel. Brel wrote it after the end of his relationship with Suzanne “Zizou” Gabriello. Although widely heard as a love song, Brel described it in a 1966 interview as a hymn to male cowardice and to the self-humiliation of a man pleading not to be left.
Brel first recorded the song on 11 September 1959, and released it later that year on his fourth album, La Valse à mille temps. Its dramatic, pleading vocal line and text-centered arrangement make it especially suited to an expressive, rubato interpretation. One melodic passage, accompanying the image of “pearls of rain,” adapts a theme from the second part of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6. Brel recorded the song again as the title track of his 1972 album Ne me quitte pas. It has been widely covered in French and other languages; Rod McKuen’s English adaptation, “If You Go Away,” became a pop standard. Johnny Hallyday issued a live version in 1984, recorded at Le Zénith in Paris.
