How Did Ca Plane Pour Moi End Up in So Many Movies?

How did a 1977 song in French by the Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand become a go-to for 21st century American movie soundtracks, from big studio films to quirky indies?

“Ça Plane Pour Moi” has appeared in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “We’ll Never Have Paris,” from writer/director/star Simon Helburg (Wolowitz in “The Big Bang Theory”). I first noticed it in “Ruby Sparks.” It’s also on the soundtrack of “Eurotrip,” “National Lampoon’s European Vacation,” “Beerfest,” “127 Hours,” and “Jackass 3.5,” as well as TV’s “Gossip Girl.” It was covered by Sonic Youth and Vampire Weekend, and by The Presidents of the United States, whose version was featured in a Pepsi commercial. Here’s the original version.

And here’s the Pepsi commercial.

The lyrics are nonsense words and the title is French slang for “it’s going well for me.” It’s going pretty well for Plastic Bertrand, nearly four decades after the song was released.