Advertisement for the Alexander Trio, c. 1920
Light in the Attic Records recently released an excellent reissue of the 1969 love-affair LP of British actress Jane Birkin and professional French lecher Serge Gainsbourg, and I've been "giving it a lot of spins", as the kids say. The origin of the Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg album is pretty interesting - the couple met on a movie set and fell madly in love, and Gainsbourg asked Birkin to record a duet with him. The song was the sexy "Je T'aime", which Gainsbourg had recorded the previous year as a duet with Brigitte Bardot (he was having a brief fling with her at the time). The re-recording was made, and Gainsbourg loved it, but his record label, Philips, was concerned about Birkin's sighing and moaning during the song's second half. Supposedly, the president of the label said the couple had to record ten more songs to release with "Je T'aime" because he was willing to lose his job over a scandalous album, not a scandalous single.
Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg doesn't sound like a hastily thrown-together filler LP, though - Gainsbourg had a deep bag of tricks to dip into. Birkin was a very amateur chanteuse at this time, however, and the tracks he gave her to sing are on the thin and gimmicky side. The goofy "Orang Outan" and old-timey novelty "18-39" are the album's weakest tracks, although "Jane B" (a self-description by Birkin set to a Chopin tune) and the sweet ballad "Le Canari Sur Le Balcon" are quite nice.
Gainsbourg re-purposed some of his previous compositions for the Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg project as well, singing a song he wrote for Francoise Hardy ("L'Anamour") and one he wrote for France Gall ("Les Sucettes", a song perverted enough to scar Gall's career for years). His rich voice also gives some great gravitas to the ballads "Sous Le Soleil Exactement" and "Manon", and his other duet with Birkin on the album (the also kinda-scandalous "69 Annee Erotique") is almost as good as "Je T'aime". The whole LP, though, orbits around that first duet, and I admit that it's a compelling track, even though I'm not even remotely scandalized by Birkin's purring. To be honest, the little-girl/lollipop fantasy of "Les Sucettes" is much more disturbing, but "Je T'aime" created a classic pop-music scandal in 1969, and I'm nothing if not a respecter of the classics.
"Je T'aime ... Moi Non Plus" by Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin
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