Tintin Forums

It's really difficult to say, probably because it's difficult to fathom Tintin's personality (as Tintinologists often point out we know nothing about his history, family, etc.). I think he'd like Bach. In Jazz probably George Gershwin. Maybe The Beatles. I can picture him listening to Coldplay! I don't think he would be so into Radiohead (bit on the depressive side... excuse me please Radiohead fans) and I don't see him clubbing or going to many raves.

For today's music, I was thinking maybe he'd like some of the older music by The Decemberists, Tarkio or Margot and the Nuclear So & So's.
I don't think it's considered mainstream music, but I can see him liking something like that.

I agree wih the jazz and classical, although 'jazz' was really popular music of the day, back in the 1930s.

Tintin is an international traveller so wouldn't his taste in music somehow reflect this? I'm thinking perhaps he might like a bit of what is narrowly termed 'World Music'; Peruvian nose flutes, Moroccan fiddles, Chinese folk, etc. He went to South America a few times so maybe he likes a bit of Latin too.

Somehow I just can't picture him listening to modern pop or hip hop, but you never know...

Since Tintin is Franco-belgian, I believe his musical tastes include,first and foremost, the French chanteurs and chansonniers that were popular during the war and immediately after. (A chanteur sings more lighthearted songs, almost humorous ones, while a chansonnier sings more poetic texts, with only one or two musical instruments to carry the tune.) We know that Charles Trenet is popular in the Tintin universe, has two of his songs are referred to. One of them became the jingle for the towing company radio commercial in Black Gold. I don't think it's much of a stretch to think that Tintin enjoys his music.

I believe, and this one has not references to the Tintinverse to back it up, that he would like the harmonies of Les Compagnons de la chansons, a group of 9 males singers, active from the 1940's to the 1980's, who took worldwide popular songs, in cover them in their styles, singing in harmony.

Since they're both Belgians, Tintin would also be familiar with the work of Jacques Brel. However, I'm not sure he would like Brel. For one, Tintin would not like the narrow nationalism that implies that because they're from the same country, they must like each other (I know I don't like it when people assume that, because I'm French-Canadian, I must like Celine). For another, Brel's songs can be depressing, and I just don't associate them with Tintin's personality.

More modern artist that he would be likely to enjoy: the sung poetry of Yves Duteil, the artistry of Michel Fugain and his Big Bazar, and the urban folk of Beau Domage, and Quebec folk group, especially their song "Grand Cheminée", an ode to an industrial chimney that was "all red and white/Like the rocket of the first Tintin on the moon" (the French lyrics sound better than my clumsy translation, believe me on that one!).

Haddock's musical tastes are easier to nail down. In Temple, he quotes not one, but two different songs. When he's freed from the Incas, he starts singing the second Charles Trenet song quoted two in the series, "Le soleil a rendez-vous avec la lune" ("The sun and they moon have a date"). Earlier, while in jail, he quotes Ray Ventura's "Tout va tres bien, madame la marquise" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHRPwipKJA4) a song in which an old aristocartic woman calls her staff before coming home. ("Everything's all right, except for your favorite horses, it's dead" says the first servant.It died in the stables fire, but otherwise , everything's all right" says the second, and so on until she learns her husband committed suicide and she's ruined.) Since one is unlikely to quote songs or artists one does not like, we can concluded Archibald likes those popular French songs, and others in the same style.

I'm not sure what our favorite twin detectives like in terms of music, but I always thought they like a song from Les Miladys, a 60's Quebec pop group that I discovered in my parents collection of 45's. In this particular song, the lead signer sings about being lonely on a trip to Paris, until she spots "two gentlemen, both fashionably dressed and identical" who guide and accompany her around town. The title of the song is, of course, "M. Dupont".

I was rereading the English version of The Shooting Star last night, and I noticed that Tintin was singing/ humming the first few lines of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" from Oklahoma at one point, so I wonder if he'd be interested in Broadway showtunes in general?


Interestingly enough, in the English version of that scene, The Captain was singing a Broadway showtune, too ("I've got Sun in the Morning," from Annie Get Your Gun). Guess the translators were fond of showtunes?

Maybe. I think I recall from Michael Turner's obituary that he was a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and enjoyed participating in amateur productions of their operettas, so I suppose his interest might have extended to later musical theatre too. And I guess it was mostly a case of finding songs (or snatches of songs) that would be reasonably familiar to mostly British readers. Obviously Hergé's original choice of Charles Trenet's The Sun and the Moon have a Date is a more perfect choice for a scene following a solar eclipse, but I guess the translators thought it better to go for a sun-referencing song that readers would recognise as a pop song. To British readers, the line from the Trenet song might simply have sounded like an astronomical observation that Haddock was randomly setting to music!

I think in the original French version of The Shooting Star, Tintin sings a snatch of the French folk/children's song, Sur le Pont d'Avignon. So Tintin's tendency to burst into Broadway show tunes does seem to be a trait he displays in the English translations only!


I think I read somewhere that Hergé admired Brel's work. (Maybe it was in a Michael Farr book, or maybe I'm imagining it!) I take your point that Tintin generally seems a bit optimistic for Brel, but I can see the later Tintin, from Tintin and the Picaros, being a Brel fan.


Heh heh! Thanks for introducing us to that. You can see that appealing to Hergé and Haddock's sense of humour!

I quickly flipped through the book to see what he was singing in the French version, but could not find the exact spot. Would you mind quoting what page it was on?

I have a 3-books-in-1 version, so the page numbers are all different (sorry!), but it's where Tintin realizes that the seaplane from the Aurora is coming to pick up him and Snowy from the meteorite, and that gets him singing--it's immediately before the giant spider's entrance. Hope that helps! (Though Balthazar suspected it might be "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" in the original version...)


Haha, I figured as much, but that's interesting about Michael Turner liking Gilbert & Sullivan. Thanks for the tidbit!

Yep, to add to that, it's page 54 of the single-volume edition, and it is indeed Sur le Pont d'Avignon that he's singing in the French version.



Here are a couple of the obituaries for Michael Turner from which I may have been badly half-remembering that information. Maybe his taste was more for old-time Music Hall (the British equivalent of American Vaudeville) than for Gilbert and Sullivan. Or maybe I'm recalling a different obituary!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michael-turner-translator -and-publisher-who-brought-tintin-to-a-british-audience-1796284.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-ob ituaries/6029763/Michael-Turner.html

I can see him basically keeping up with what was popular at the time, so I suppose Jazz in the '20s and '30s, whatever you call that sort of stereotypical '40s music in the '40s, maybe some rock 'n' roll in the '50s, and some not-particularly-heavy rock in the '60s and '70s (probably the Beatles, and Queen which I think someone might have mentioned) whilst hanging on to his older tastes all the time: (so by the end he's listening to Jazz and Rock and/or Roll) on top of all that I imagine some random classical stuff and perhaps some of the music from places he'd been. I somehow can't see a modern-day Tintin being that interested in much new music since the time his adventures stopped.