À Tout le Monde

Music and lyrics

The music video for "A Tout le Monde" was banned by MTV, who claimed it was pro-suicide. However, in an interview conducted around 1994, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine stated:

It's not a suicide song. What it is, it's, you, it's when people have a loved one that dies and they end on a bad note, you know, they wish that they could say something to them. So this is an opportunity for the deceased to say something before they go. And it was my impression of what I would like to say to people, if I had say, 3 seconds to do so in life before I died I'd say to the entire world, to all my friends, I love you all, and now I must go. These are the last words I'll ever speak, and they'll set me free. I don't have to say I'm sorry, I don't have to say I'm going to miss you, or I'll wait for ya. You know, I'll just say I loved you all, good, bad, indifferent, I loved you all.

Title

"À tout le monde" is French for "To all the world" or "To everyone". The song's chorus, "à tout le monde, à tous mes amis, je vous aime, je dois partir", translated to English is respectively: "To everyone, to all my friends, I love you, I have to leave". The original release of the track does not feature a grave accent on the letter "à" anywhere within the liner notes, lyrics or cover art; this was later rectified on the 2007 version.

Connection to Dawson College shooting

Kimveer Gill, the man behind the Dawson College shooting in September 2006, was a fan of the band. In his blog on VampireFreaks.com on the day of the attack, he had mentioned the song. This led Megadeth to be blamed by many watchdog groups for the shooting. In a performance in Montreal on September 27, shortly after the attack, Mustaine said to the crowd:

The guy who went to Dawson College and shot everyone, it's terrible. Aside from the fact that what he did was wrong, we have a relationship with Montreal, and that really pissed us off.

Before the concert, Mustaine said in an interview for CBC News:

I was so angry that this guy would use my song, and that he would try and turn that beautiful song into something ugly and nasty. It's for those who lost their lives, and it's a gift to those who are in the process of healing (...) and Gill was not worthy of being a Megadeth fan.

2007 version

The song was remade in 2007 on the album United Abominations as "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)", sung as a duet with Cristina Scabbia, singer of Italian metal band Lacuna Coil. The guitars for the song are all in standard tuning (bringing the song to F-sharp minor), whereas Youthanasia was recorded a half-step down (which put the song in F minor). The new version is also slightly faster, and the guitar solo performed by Glen Drover is musically 4 bars longer than the original by Marty Friedman. À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free) was the first single released from the album with a new music video made for it. The song's title has been revised in order to distinguish it from the original, although this alteration does not appear on some pressings of the album. The title also features the aforementioned grave accent on the letter "à", which was omitted on the original version.

Reception

On June 11, 2007, the video for the single won its sixteenth victory in the context of the one-on-one video show, L'Ultime Combat des Clips, aired Monday to Thursday on the French-Canadian music channel, Musique Plus. Winning sixteen consecutive times earned them a star in the show's "hall of fame." Despite the accolades, both the original music video for "A Tout le Monde" and its remake remain banned by MTV, possibly for lyrical content that they deem to be pertaining to committing suicide. The duet version did, however, air on MTV2's Headbangers Ball upon release.

Track listing

Personnel

Youthanasia version:

United Abominations version: