The 10 best songs by Serge Gainsbourg
Composer, pianist, crooner, provocateur, poet, seducer of women, drunk, imp, trickster, artist: Serge Gainsbourg was all these things and more. When he died on March 2nd, 1991, the people of France entered a state of collective mourning. “Ask anyone in Paris,” Air’s Nicolas Godin once said, “And they can remember what they were doing when they heard Gainsbourg had died. It was such a shock. Because he was always there, part of our culture.”
Between 1958 and 1987, Serge Gainsbourg released 17 genre-bending studio albums – all featuring those mellifluent half-sung vocals. Though it frayed with age, that smoky voice was perhaps the only element of Gainsbourg’s music that remained unchanged. Everything below it – the textures, rhythms and influences – was in constant flux.
Serge’s inner life was much the same. “He was the best and the worst,” said Brigitte Bardot [quotes via The Telegraph], “A young Russian prince who turned, when confronted with the tragic realities of life, into Quasimodo: moving or disgusting, depending on his, or our, frame of mind.”
That erratic personality manifested itself in a string of sonic transformations. With his roots as a writer of popular Chanson’s nestled at the core of his songcraft, Gainsbourg glided between jazz, pop, rock, reggae, disco, electronica, afrobeat and funk, upsetting right-wingers, champagne socialists and bourgeois moralists as he went. In this list, we’ll be naming our ten favourite Gainsbourg cuts.
The 10 best songs by Serge Gainsbourg:
10. ‘L’eau à la bouche’
Serge was a master of cool. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the video for his 1960 single ‘L’eau à la bouche’, in which the singer is seen making his best Jean-Luc Godard impression. Cigarette pinned to his lips, he croons above an orchestral arrangement reminiscent of the original James Bond score – composed by John Barry, who was married to Jane Birkin before Gainsbourg entered the frame.
‘L’eau à la bouche’, the title song from the film of the same name (for which he also composed the score), gave Gainsbourg his first real taste of commercial success. Today, it serves as a reminder of just how much his music changed over the years. Who would have thought this same singer would be making reggae ten years later?
9. ‘Lemon Incest’
A shining example of how misunderstood Gainsbourg is outside France, ‘Lemon Incest’ is perhaps the most controversial single in the French singer’s catalogue. It’s also one of the most intoxicating. The song has long been accused of celebrating paedophilia, but such criticisms ignore just how essential provocation was to Gainsbourg’s creative raison d’etre. I would argue that turning away from a song simply because it makes one uncomfortable only heightens the importance of the songwriter’s role as an upsetter.
Anyway, Charlotte Gainsbourg – the one everyone was so worried about – has repeatedly argued that the song is actually about “the infinite love of a father for his daughter and of a daughter for her father.” None of this is to diminish the negative effect the song might have on victims of paedophilia – It is certainly not for everyone. But on a purely sonic level, I would personally argue, ‘Lemon Incest’ is far too innovative to ignore.
8. ‘Couleur Café’
Released in the autumn of 1964 on Gainsbourg Percussions, ‘Couleur Café’ was an act of reinvention that saw Serge immerse himself in a swirl of Cuban, West African and Latin influences. It’s possible he was left unsatisfied with the recording – Gainsbourg didn’t make another until 1968 – but it still stands up decades later.
Serge himself may have come around to the track in the end, releasing a live version recorded at the Zénith de Paris as a single twenty years after it was recorded. Jane Birkin would later record a cover of the track on her 1996 album Versions Jane with an arrangement by Senegalese drummer Doudou N’diaye Rose.
7. ‘La Chanson de Prévert’
Released in the wake of Gainsbourg’s divorce from Elisabeth ‘Lize’ Levitsky, this 1961 cut – featured on his third album L’Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg – was inspired was absurdity poet Jacques Prévert’s song ‘Les Feuilles mortes’, which was composed for Marcel Carné’s 1946 film Les Portes de la Nuit.
Gainsbourg had a habit of borrowing heavily from pre-existing material but always did so with absolute transparency, with the singer approaching Prévert to ask permission to steal his original lyrics. After sharing a bottle of champagne over breakfast, the poet gave Serge his blessing, leaving the French singer to craft a touching waltz featuring two intermingled classical guitars.
6. ‘Baudelaire’
Featured on one of Gainsbourg’s finest albums, 1962’s N° 4, this sultry setting of Baudelaire’s poetry marks a fracture between the singer’s classic Chanson-jazz style and the modish inflexions of Gainsbourg Confidentiel and Gainsbourg Percussions – both released in 1964.
For this Latin-infused number, and indeed all the songs on No.4, Gainsbourg worked with a small team comprised of double bassist Paul Rovère, percussionist Christian Garros and pianist, arranger and orchestral conductor Alain Goraguer, the latter of whom would go on to compose the dizzying score for René Laloux’s erotic animated science fiction movie La Planète Sauvage. If you haven’t heard the score, stop what you’re doing right now and find it. You’ll thank us later.
5. ‘La Javanaise’
Originally composed by Gainsbourg for the great Juliette Gréco and recorded by them both in 1963, ‘La Javanaise’ sees Serge conjure up the heat of a stifling Parisian summer. A multilayered pun, the title of his brilliant single refers both to the Parisian dance craze sweeping the city at the time of its composition and the word game ‘Javanaise’, in which the players add meaningless syllables to various questions and ask for a yes or no answer.
The story goes that Gainsbourg came up with the song after a summer evening drinking champagne and listening to records at the opulent lounge at 33, rue de Verneuil. The morning after, Serge sent her the music for ‘La Javanaise’, which Gréco would debut in March 1963, placing it at the start of her La Tête de l’art tour setlist. Gainsbourg wrote songs for a host of other female French singers, including Françoise Hardy (‘Comment te dire adieu’) and, towards the end of his life, an entire album for Venessa Paradis.
4.’ Je t’aime … moi non plus’
How could we not include this infamous erotic masterpiece? Written following Serge’s first date with Brigitte Bardot, during which she ordered him to write her “the most beautiful love song he could imagine”, it was eventually re-recorded with Jane Birkin after Bardot became concerned about how the scandalous track might impact her acting career.
On release, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ sparked considerable controversy and was banned by everyone from both the BBC and the Vatican. Once again, Gainsbourg was forced to bat away claims that the song had been recorded “audio vérité” and included real audio from a steamy sex session. “Thank goodness it wasn’t. Otherwise, I hope it would have been a long-playing record,” he said nonchalantly.
3. ’69 année érotique’
This next track is taken from 1969′s Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg and sits alongside a host of Gainsbourg’s classical, including Je t’aime … moi non plus’. While that opening number did hog the spotlight somewhat, the sun-dappled ’69 année érotique’ is perhaps an even finer example of Gainsbourg’s timeless sophistication.
An immaculate blend of Chanson-era Serge and late ’60s psychedelia, this astonishingly evocative single rarely receives the praise it deserves. We want to remedy that: ’69 année érotique’ encapsulates everything that was good and just and true about France’s greatest post-war songwriter.
2. ‘Aux Armes et caetera – Dub Style’
Gainsbourg was a real shapeshifter. By the end of the 1970s, he’d shed his skin countless times over and embraced a myriad of styles. With ‘Aux Armes et caetera’, he again surprised his fanbase with this unexpected collaboration with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. The original song is a real diamond, but this undulating, psych-tinged dub version feels way more like Serge.
Instrumental in popularising reggae in France, ‘Aux Armes et caetera’ was a direct attack on the far right. Countless antisemites, racists and xenophobes took issue with the fact that a Jew was reinterpreting the words of ‘La Marseilles’ – the French national anthem – over music crafted by two Black Jamaicans. The far-right press called for Gainsbourg’s citizenship to be revoked, and the singer was nearly assassinated at a concert in Strasbourg. Thankfully, all attempts to silence him failed and this song remains a testament to his unflinching commitment to liberty.
1. ‘Cargo Culte’
The final track from Gainsbourg’s moody romantic epic L’Histoire de Melody Nelson, ‘Cargo Culte’ is a monumentally influential recording, foreshadowing countless genres, including hip-hop (it’s those snappy drums, man) in just 28 minutes. Considering it concludes what has to be Serge’s finest album and contains multitudes despite its minimalism, we thought it deserved the hallowed number one spot.
The album tells the story of a middle-aged man who goes out driving and accidentally hits a British girl cycling down the same road. He stops the car and gets out to help her, falling madly in love with his victim. The couple spend the next few weeks madly making love. When she leaves and flies back to England, he performs an African Cargo Cult ritual in an effort to bring her back. Sadly, this mystical act has the undesired effect of causing her plane to crash.