Enfants Sauvages Lyrics in English Claudio Capéo
Écorchés literally means 'flayed' or 'skinned'. It's a strong, somewhat visceral word that isn't commonly found in everyday conversation or many songs.
In
"Enfants sauvages" is Claudio Capéo looking back at growing up rough around Strasbourg with a group of friends who called themselves "sales gosses," scruffy kids with holes in their pockets and scars to show for it.
The song isn't sad about it. It treats those bruises, the broken teeth, the fights, as proof of who they were and still are. Even grown up, the singer says they promised each other to stay those same scruffy kids at heart, carrying their old scars ("nos fractures et nos bosses") rather than smoothing them over.
There's a nod to Renaud, the French singer famous for writing about working-class street life, which places this crew squarely in that tradition: puddle-jumping in cul-de-sacs, a borrowed sound system, and a shared dream of getting out of the neighborhood and seeing the world, without ever really leaving who they were behind.
