It takes inspiration from "Tableau de Paris à cinq heures du matin", an 1802 song by Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers.

[3] The modernized lyrics replace Désaugiers' sunrise tableau of bakeries, fruitstands and street cleaners with a less soothing scene of trucks, cars and strippers.

Dutronc had the idea of adding a manouche-style guitar part, but a flutist working elsewhere in the same building, Roger Bourdin [fr], was asked to listen to the recording and agreed to improvise the short but evocative solos that appear after each sung line on the finished track.

[6] On 23 March 1968, "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" was Dutronc's third single to reach number one on the French charts, where it stayed for one week.

[9] In 1991, "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" was voted the best French-language single of all time in a poll of music critics organised by Le Nouvel Observateur for a TV special broadcast on Antenne 2.