Alors on danse
Stromae
How to study this song
The card for “Alors on danse” is built from 56 study entries at A1+: 31 French words, 5 adjectives and 20 verb forms. Begin with étude, travail and taf: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 20 distinct forms against 5 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| FR | EN | ES | IT | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| étude | study | estudio | studio | estudo | studie | Studium |
| travail | work | trabajo | lavoro | trabalho | werk | Arbeit |
| taf | job | curro | lavoro | emprego | baantje | Job |
| thunes | cash | pasta | grana | massa |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 31
- Adjectives
- 5
- Word combos
- 9
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 20
- Quiz questions
- 35
More French songs at this level
Background
About the song
Paul Van Haver, a Belgian of Rwandan and Flemish descent who performs as Stromae, wrote this track in 2009 while studying cinema in Brussels.
He built it around a saxophone loop and a plain four-to-the-floor beat, and over that he listed the ordinary chain of adult worries: school leads to work, work to money, money to spending, spending to debt.
The chorus answers all of it with a shrug and a dance floor. That contrast — a heavy list of problems delivered over music made for clubs — is why the song works for learners: the vocabulary is the vocabulary of daily life, repeated until it sticks.
Did you know?
The track was released in Belgium in September 2009 and across Europe in early 2010, and it reached number one in some nineteen countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Turkey, as well as on the pan-European Hot 100.
Kanye West recorded a remix in 2010, which pushed the song beyond French-speaking audiences. Francophonie Diffusion named it the most played French-language single in the world that year, and it later became one of the few songs to spend more than a year on the German singles chart.
Charts & streaming
Taken from the debut album «Cheese» (2010), the single sold over a million copies and went platinum in eight markets.
In France alone it had moved some 334,000 units by mid-2014, which placed it among the hundred best-selling singles of the century there. It remains Stromae's calling card and one of the most streamed French-language tracks of its decade.