Send "Serge Gainsbourg " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In 1967, during his torrid but brief affair with Brigitte Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg wrote a song for the two of them to sing together, titled "Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus". It translates to "I Love You... Neither Do I". Confusing and ambiguous, it may simply have been an acknowledgement that their love couldn't last (she was still married to Gunter Sachs), but in any event, Bardot asked that he not release it, and it stayed hidden until it was finally compiled in 1986. A year later, the 40-year-old Gainsbourg met 22-year-old English actress and model Jane Birkin on the set of the film Slogan. On their first night alone together, he took her on a tour of Paris clubs, including a transvestite bar, and fell asleep drunk. They were married within a year.Gainsbourg was a complicated guy, outwardly arrogant and lecherous, but also introverted and wildly intelligent. He understood pop music on a very basic, almost instinctual level, what worked and what didn't, and what could cause a sensation. He was an inveterate experimenter, exploring ways to marry the French chanson to jazz, African music, exotica, reggae, electronic music, funk, and British art-rock (check his Cannabis soundtrack). And he must have known he had something sensational on his hands with "Je T'aime". He asked Birkin to record a new version with him, and she agreed, as she admits in the liner notes to Light in the Attic's new reissue of the Birkin/Gainsbourg album, only to keep him from singing it with someone else. That a little bit of jealousy motivated it makes the final recording just that much more delicious. Where the Bardot version was pillowy, her vocal almost too humid, Birkin brings to it a playfulness that balances Gainsbourg's debauched deadpan. If you haven't heard it, it goes basically like this: She says she loves him, he enigmatically responds "neither do I," they matter-of-factly describe the rhythm of sex, and she very convincingly simulates a climax. It's a stunning song in every respect, from the dreamy organ to the strings that simulate billowing bedsheets to Birkin's goose-bumpy falsetto, and it caused quite a sensation indeed. Country after country lined up to ban it from the radio, but none could hold it back, and it sold like crazy all over Europe. In the UK it occupied two spots on the chart simultaneously after Fontana got cold feet and withdrew it, allowing another label to get in on the action. Thing is, we like to think of the 60s as a liberated time, when hippies convinced people that sex was okay, but it's not true. For most of the people still running things, this song was too much. Hell, I wonder what would happen if it came out today. Of course, "Je T'aime" was just one song from the album, and it gets the most ink for a reason, but there's plenty of other amazing stuff here, not least of which is "69 Année Érotique" ("69 Erotic Year"). Yeah, the title is a cheap pun, which is a classic Gainsbourg move, but the shuddering piano and snapping bass provide deep atmosphere for his sing-speak, and while we're at it, Arthur Greenslade deserves major credit for the opulent and moody arrangements on this record. The combination of Gainsbourg and Greenslade is nearly as sharp as Gainsbourg's collaboration with Jean-Claude Vannier two years later on his masterpiece, Histoire de Melody Nelson....full text |
| Thefreelibrary |
| In 1969, French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and his British actress girlfriend Jane Birkin recorded "Je T'aime ... Moi Non Plus" (translation: "I Love You ... Me Neither"), a song he'd written a year before for his then-girlfriend, international sexpot Brigitte Bardot. At the end of "Je T'aime"'s undulating three minutes, Birkin appears to have an orgasm. The duet, unsurprisingly, was censored and banned across Europe and publicly denounced by the Vatican. It also sold seven million copies. Thus began the fruitful and scandalous life, both artistic and romantic, of the 36-year-old Gainsbourg and 19-year-old Birkin. Thus also began Gainsbourg's career as cult hero to generations of young men who seek to make art as a means to seduce young women. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Two years after "Je T'aime," emboldened by its success, the couple recorded their second album together, Histoire de Melody Nelson. The first time you hear it--the strutting bass lines, swaggering riffs, swooning strings, crazy breakbeats and Gainsbourg's gruff spoken word--the effect is woozy, like stumbling through time and reality into one of the swinging '60s Antonioni films Birkin starred in, or just taking a shallow bubble bath in frothy pink LSD. Without translation, Gainsbourg's smoky, mumbled French submerges deep beneath Jean-Claude Vannier's deeply psychedelic orchestration, something that has made Histoire a favorite among sample freaks for a decade plus. But once the lyrics are known, Gainsbourg's twisted genius is revealed. Ads by Google Drug Market Reports Find Market Research & Analysis on the Drug Industry MarketResearch.com/Drug Shop Knee Socks Keep Your Feet Warm & Cozy With Our Selection Of Knee Socks. Become.com The story of Histoire is stunningly smutty even today: a lonely older man driving his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost (incidentally the same model Gainsbourg owned) hits a young English girl named Melody (guess who) riding her bicycle, falls in love with her instantly, proceeds to deflower her in a brothel, lets her get on a plane back to England which crashes due to his sabotage and kills her, at which point the man spirits away to New Guinea to worship his eternal love with the "Cargo Culte." Sick, deviant and perfectly attuned to Gainsbourg's forebears, the Marquis de Sade and Vladimir Nabokov--who he'd previously approached to adapt Lolita as a conceptual album before learning it was already being filmed by Stanley Kubrick--Histoire is Gainsbourg's singular gift to the canon of art that excuses perversion, allowing us vicarious decadence. In an interview last year, Birkin told a story about their initial meeting and her rebuffed attempts to get Gainsbourg to dance at a party. When she finally convinced him, he stepped on her toes through the whole song. "It was then that I realized with a lurch in my heart that his showing off actually hid a man who was endearingly gauche," she said. Histoire is that moment beautifully realized. It is the Dirty Old Man of France enabled by the nubile muse who understands the rudeness is just a guise. MORE HEAT FROM SERGE GAINSBOURG [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot Bonnie et Clyde (1967) Recorded the year before he met Birkin, this now seems like Gainsbourg's last innocent summer album. Full of the bubbly chanson-style pop he'd built his early career on, including "Pauvre Lola," heretofore known as The Happiest Song Ever Recorded. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg Jane Birkin/ Serge Gainsbourg (1969)...full text |
| Iplextra |
| A year later, the 40-year-old Gainsbourg met 22-year-old English actress and model Jane Birkin on the set of the film Slogan. On their first night alone together, he took her on a tour of Paris clubs, including a transvestite bar, and fell asleep drunk...full text |
Serge Gainsbourg lyrics
