Mental Health Music Monday Playlist #16 – French edition

Our weekly selection of three songs exploring mental health, with a language twist. To help you discover more songs to relate to, and French artists to listen to ♫

Jul 14, 2025

Hey there,

Happy Mental Health Music Monday Playlist and Bastille Day! 🥖🥐⚜️

Today's selection is particularly close to my heart as we celebrate France's national day. It felt fitting to share music from my homeland 😃 I know not everyone will be able to understand the lyrics, so I’m adding a few words to each video, so you know what it’s about.

Our cultural identity shapes our relationship with mental health to a certain extent. The places we come from, the languages that formed our earliest thoughts, and the social norms we grew up with all create unique frameworks for how we process and express emotions and seek healing, and it also influences which help is available to us, if any. Our roots may even make us live with war and colonization traumas for example, and much more, which definitely affects our health.

I’m pretty sure there's also something a bit special deep down, about hearing these themes expressed in our mother tongue, that resonates on a different frequency than when we hear them in a foreign language, no matter if we’re fluent.

Today's additions to our Sonder & Petrichor playlist (available on Spotify) honor three talented French artists, talking about difficult thoughts, regrets and anxiety. I hope these songs offer you a breath a fresh air with a language twist, and make you realize even more that no matter the culture, we all go through universal emotional experiences 💙

🎵 "Dans ma tête" - Louane

“In my head” is one of the multiple songs Louane has about mental health struggles. She’s very open about this subject and helps raise awareness through her music and her vulnerability in many interviews. The lyrics are about insomnia, invasive thoughts, and say things like "One more night, again, I'm chained by my incoherent dreams. One more night, again, I think if this goes on, I'm going under", "Too loud in my head, you know I'd just like it to stop. I'd like to breathe, calm the storm. I'd just like my thoughts to stop. These ideas that mix up and make me sick, I can feel it in my veins. I'm sick, I'm consumed by sorrow" and "Tell me why I can't breathe, when everything in my head gets mixed up. Tell me why I'm out of breath, when I feel everything in me freeze up."

🎵 “Si seulement…” - Kendji Girac

A little while ago, when silently struggling with his mental health, he went a bit far, which ended in a domestic accident involving a gun and him getting hurt. He survived and came back to the spotlight with this song called “If only”, saying he wished he could have said it out loud instead of writing it on his skin (aka the scar of the gun shot), that he left his smile on the stage back then because he was scared to mess up the pretty picture people had.

🎵 “anxiété” - Pomme

The title is “anxiety” and she sings as she is anxiety itself, saying things like “I'm the one you can't see, I'm the one you can't hear, I'm hiding on the edge of tears, I'm the drama queen”, “When you want to sleep, I come to kiss you. If you want to run, I crawl by your side.” and “Under your chest, I knock to damage you.”

I'd love to know if music from your own cultural background or heritage has been significant in your mental health journey. Or if perhaps music from a culture different from your own has offered unexpected comfort or insight?

It was hard to select only three songs, so I guess you can expect a new French edition in a year, except if you want some more before that? Let me know!

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