Accidental Kidsongs: Je t'aime moi non plus

Jane Birkin with Serge Gainsbourg: Je t'aime moi non plus (vinyl)

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I bought my first record when I was five years old (this masterpiece, if you want to know). Before that, I loved playing my grandmother’s singles – of which I remember only a recording of the Slave Choir from Verdi’s Nabucco – and, once I was given my own little record player for my fifth birthday, I liberally borrowed my mother’s singles, which were kept in an album with plastic sleeves.

It certainly was an eclectic collection. It included Manfred Mann (Ha! Ha! Said The Clown), Gilbert Bécaud (Nathalie; German version), The Archies (Sugar Sugar), The Peels (Juanita Banana), Trini Lopez (America), Al Martino (Spanish Eyes), Esther & Abi Ofraim (Noch einen Tanz; a deliciously sinister number in which a couple observe the death of the woman’s rich husband), Chris Andrews (Pretty Belinda) and Jane Birkin’s “Je t'aime moi non plus”.

My brother and I played them all, as well as later additions, such as The Sweet’s “Poppa Joe”. And my mother evidently saw no cause for withholding Birkin’s orgasmic stylings from us. I assume that she calculated, correctly, that her sons would not realise exactly what (never mind who) was going down on the song. So we cheerfully played the song with its lovely organ (the instrument!). I don’t know what we made of the lady’s noises. Maybe she had a sore tummy from sucking on too many lollipops. Whatever it was, we had no idea that there was such a thing as sex, and if we did, we had no idea what it sounded like. We just really dug the tune.

I’ve read that on the recording Birkin didn’t fake her orgasm; if it was faked, then Birkin certainly would trump Meg Ryan.

This is a vinyl rip, which is superior to the sterile digital rendering of a CD rip.

This and that : Bonnie and Clyde

Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot : Bonnie and Clyde

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Another song about a couple, well about 2 couples : Like Bonnie and her lover/associate, Bardot and Gainsbourg were outlaws and runaways, both married or in a relationship during their love affair in 1967

Over one night, that year, , Gainsbourg wrote three of his best songs for BB : “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Harley Davidson” and “Je t’aime, moi non plus”. But his true Bardot-era masterpiece would be “Initials BB”.


See here a decent translation of the lyrics

Serge was one of the first “modern” French pop singers, after the older “classic” cabaret generation (Brel, Piaf, Brassens), and the first one (the only one ?) to have a sound of his own, although he started declinig in the eighties.

There is everything in Serge Gainsbourg : poetry, humor, provocation, despair, love, sex, alcohol. He was like us : both beautiful and ugly.