DOWNLOAD THE SONGSHEET
Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)(WORD)
Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)(PDF)
You can play along in the same key as all the videos, but I've added the two verses from the non-edited album version which is the first video!
"Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" has been described as "a faux European waltz tune", and the arrangement is a very simple one of strummed acoustic guitar and upright bass, with brief bursts of French-style accordion at the start and the end. The arranger and conductor was Ian Green.
The lyrics contain a large number of contemporary and other references:
- Marlene Dietrich: German–American actress and singer
- Zizi Jeanmaire: French ballerina
- Pierre Balmain: French designer of elegant fashions
- Boulevard Saint-Michel: street in the Latin Quarter of Paris
- The Rolling Stones: popular British rock and roll band
- Sacha Distel: French singer and musician
- Sorbonne: University of Paris
- Picasso: Spanish pioneer of modern art
- Juan-les-Pins: fashionable beach resort on the French Riviera
- Topless swimsuit: first conceived by Austrian American fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in 1964
- Saint Moritz: fashionable ski resort in the Engadin, Swiss Alps
- Napoleon brandy: a blended brandy in which the youngest brandy of the blend has been aged for at least six years
- Aga Khan: world-traveling Islamic leader and racehorse owner
The version on the album Peter Sarstedt is longer than the radio edit version released as a single, having extra stanzas beginning "You go to the embassy parties ..." and "You're in between twenty and thirty....". The difference in length between the two versions is approximately 30 seconds.
It was a number-one 1 hit in the UK Singles Chart for four weeks in 1969, and was awarded the 1970 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In the United States, the record reached No. 61 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles. The single also peaked at No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100 that May.