Jacques Dutronc: Le Responsable (1969)

Because British and American pop and rock dominated the Sixties, very few artists from outside those regions – we make exceptions for Canadians like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Band and Leonard Cohen – made it into the ears of anyone but their own people.

Yes, Kyu Sakamoto from Japan had a big hit, as did Los Bravos from Spain (although they weren't all Spanish). But France always suffered from a cultural snobbery: the Ye-Ye acts, breathy women singers – more cool whisperers – and others barely made a ripple in global pop.

But one of the biggest stars of the era was Jacques Dutronc who was 20 when Beatlemania and the British Invasion began.

He'd been in a pop band but after military service he started again as a songwriter (Françoise Hardy covered his work and they were married for seven years in the Eighties) but then re-purposed himself as a solo artist and by the mid-Sixties he was cracking chart-bothering hits, many with a garageband attack and cowritten with Jacques Lanzmann, a novelist and journalist.

By the Seventies, Dutronc was in movies although every few years he would release another album.

He's 80 now and the last album was in 2003.

This song -- which featured in the recent Netflix series Class Act -- kicked off his second album and was a huge hit.

And you can hear why: hugely influenced by the Stones' Satisfaction and with a desperate delivery which propels it through its two and half furious minutes.

Play loud.

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For more one-offs, oddities or songs with an interesting backstory see From the Vaults.

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Here are the lyrics in approximate translation, nuances of French lost a bit.

The Responsible Man

I have worries, I have cares

I have troubles, I have torments

I don't have morals, I don't have money

I don't have luck, I don't have friends

I don't have luck, I have taxes

My stomach aches, my teeth hurt

But I wouldn't want to change skins

Because I love annoyances

I am a responsible man

I don't hide my head in the sand

I don't want to sing like Grandfather

"In life, you don't have to worry"

Because if I worry today

It's because yesterday he laughed

And tomorrow if I have children

I want them to be happy in life

The more worries I have, the happier I am

I whip them up like cream

What I like most is being sick with worry

I feed on the worries every which way

But I also like catastrophes

Which put my life in relief

When things are going well, I am unhappy

When things are going poorly, I am very happy

I am a responsible man

I don't hide my head in the sand

I don't want to sing like Grandfather

"In life, you don't have to worry"

And I want to sing to the contrary

"In life you have to worry"

In order to always be solitary

With those who like me see clearly

I am a responsible man

I am a responsible man...