It’s difficult to describe Serge Gainsbourg to anyone not familiar with him… in some ways he could be construed as a combination of a ‘French Bowie’ and a ‘French Leonard Cohen’.
He started off as a writer and performer of Chanson - which technically is French for ‘song’ but much like the word ‘indie’ it has been repurposed as the name for a genre of music. In this case, chanson is a very French-sounding form of pop music. Gainsbourg wrote for himself, and wrote hits for young pop stars too (including France Gall's Eurovision winning "Poupee de cire poupee de son").
Gainsbourg mixed chanson with Cuban rhythms and jazz, but after receiving terrible reactions and reviews from his live shows for what was perceived as his ‘bad’ singing voice (quite unfair, I find him to have a rich, pleasant baritone) he retreated from live performance and became mostly a studio-based artist.
Gainsbourg started exploring different musical avenues, including rock n roll, adventurous song-suites featuring a mixture of rock bands with orchestral sections (typically arranged by his collaborator Jean-Claude Vannier), he did a reggae album, dabbled in moody synth pop and through his low key spoken-word-over-music tracks, was said to have dabbled in rap.
Gainsbourg was also a dirty little bastard, whose twisted sense of humour led him to put dirty songs in the mouths of young pop songstresses, to collaborate with his daughter Charlotte on the dangerously titled ‘lemon in zest’ (with a video featuring Serge and Charlotte sitting on a bed together) and to create his troublemaking alias ‘Gainsbarre’ through which he did and said what he wanted.
But enough biography, onto this album… following on from the success of his steamy duet with partner Jane Birkin "Je t'aime, moi non plus", Gainsbourg decided to up the stakes with a steamy seductive album (maybe he's the French Isaac Hayes too?) telling a Lolita-esque story of obsession with a young women 'Melodie Nelson' meshing a rock band with imaginatively arranged orchestral embellishments, and producing a sound that went on to influence artists such like Beck and Air.
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