We say that a song that creeps into our head and that we can't get rid of is "an earworm".

• Read also: The 100 best songs in the history of Quebec

• To read also: “A song is a miracle!”

Me, the songs that stick to my skin, I prefer to call them “heartworms”.

They are embedded there and nothing can dislodge them.

My cousin Evelyne was my best friend. Jean-Pierre Ferland was his favorite singer. Luckily for us was his favorite song.

When she died at 48 of a dazzling cancer, I lost my cousin and my best friend at the same time. And at his funeral, in the crowded church, his two sisters played Une chance qu'on s'a.

What do you want? Now, every time I hear Ferland sing that, I say to myself “Lucky that I had you, Évelyne”. And since Ferland became my friend when I wrote his biography, I also say to myself: “Lucky that I have you, Jean-Pierre”.

I literally crack when Sylvain Lelièvre says he likes “useless things that do us good”.

Maybe that's a song we love. Just a useless thing... that makes us feel good. A melody that helps us through the most difficult times. Words which, two by two put together, bring tears to our eyes, remind us of a memory, of a loved one.

What makes a song top the charts on our personal charts? It is when an author has been able to find THE words to say exactly, precisely, what we think, what we feel, better than we will ever be able to express it.

This pang in the heart, I feel it when I hear the dashing Cowboys sing:

“How do these poor people / To go through the whole course / Of a life without love?” in America Cries.

Or when, in The staircase, Paul Piché sings: “I teach you nothing when I say / That we are nothing without love / To help the world you have to know how to be loved”.

These authors, these composers, I love them with love. Thank you for your “heartworms”.