Wednesday

The TV show Wednesday is about a member of the Addams family, Wednesday, who navigates a new school for outcasts, Nevermore Academy, and solves mysteries within the school. Her character is reckless, determined, and sharp. In addition, she has supernatural psychic abilities she has recently discovered. 

During Wednesday’s experience at the public school, her younger brother was bullied by a group of other students. In retaliation, Wednesday went to these students’ swimming practice and dropped two open bags of piranhas into the pool, severely injuring some of the swimmers. During this violent scene, the song playing in the background was not a shrill, eerie horror piece. In contrast, Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” was playing in accompaniment. 

This song, released in 1960, is a famous French song about moving forward in life without regretting past decisions. The title literally translates to “No, I Don’t Regret Anything”. It is a powerful piece, meant to sway the audience emotionally, and motivate and inspire them with hope. Its escalating strings and brass section provide a dramatic, exciting effect, while the guitar and piano provide a contrasting soft, yet vital melody for the song’s overall sound. Edith Piaf’s vocals, being the central focus of the song, are sung with powerful emotion. Overall, the motivating lyrics and booming instrumentation of “Je Ne Regrette Rien” have continued to move its audiences today, in part due to its frequent appearance in modern film and TV. 

At first listen, the song, played in the background of a gruesome and violent scene in Wednesday, may not seem fitting to the scene as it is usually interpreted as a happy song. However, the producers of the show found that it actually relates to the character Wednesday’s personal life, and the plot of the series overall. The song itself has a theme of no regrets, and the scene matches this by portraying Wednesday as completely ruthless as she commits such a heinous crime. The dramatic chaos of the scene works with the powerful, positively dramatic air of the song as it puts the scene in an ironically exciting light. The song is also played in the trailer of Wednesday, making its use in the show more known to its audiences. Lastly, the song is familiar to many people around the world, so audiences that know it may be further drawn to the show while exposing new ones to Edith Piaf. These aspects of the song have added excitement and anticipation to the dark plot of the show, successfully popularizing it to a great extent.