Serge Gainsbourg is one of France's most well known song writers. More than a decade after his death, he is either loved or despised in his native country, but practically ignored elsewhere aside from a few eclectic musicians. This article is an attempt to present this controversial and subversive figure's music to Anglophone audiences, and investigate just why he inspires such strong feelings, looking at, and explaining, a lot of French along the way. In fact, the author recommends that the reader learn French in order to appreciate Gainsbourg's writing as it should be done. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy.

Translations of more Gainsbourg songs in English

Gainsbourg's career began innocuously enough, as at the end of World War II a young Jew of Polish origin began playing piano in Parisian cafés in order to pay for his art studies. One evening, while playing for the sarcastic renaissance man Boris Vian, Gainsbourg realized that this kind of dark, edgy, ironic music was what he was looking for in the stale scene of post-war French pop music. While he would never abandon painting, his first love, he would become famous for his mastery of this 'minor art,' that is, song writing.

The son of an intellectual musician, Gainsbourg was an talented piano player who cut his teeth on Chopin and Brahms, and knew enough music theory to write real music. There was no dearth of talented musicians in his time, so why is he still remembered and imitated so long after his death? Gainsbourg thought of himself as a very ugly man, and this self-counsciousness lent a dark edge to his music.

Indeed, this complex is a theme that runs through Gainsbourg's work like thread in a quilt. We will take our first lyrical detour it examine his own interpretation of his physical appearance. Avec une gueule pareille Nom de Nom Ne me manque aux oreilles Que des pompons Et si je marchais à croupetons J'aurais tout du pauvre Aliboron

We can attempt to translate this with:

With a face like this one
Good God
The only thing missing from my ears
Is pompons
And if I walked limping along
I'd look just like poor Aliboron

This ugliness gets more complicated when women are put in the mix. How is it that Gainsbourg, admittedly not the best looking man, managed to spend so much time with recognized beauties like these? His explanation? Oui, mais les filles n'ont aucun dégoût J'ai une sale gueule Je ne suis qu'un voyou Mais elles se pendent toutes à mon cou Simply put: woman can't be disgusted.

Yes, but girls have no shame
I've an ugly face
I'm nothing but a scoundrel
But on my neck they all hang

It seems he might not have had all that much respect for these women. Did they really make him happy? In the video (1969) for `Ce mortal ennui' (This Deadly Boredom), he laments in his sordid voice, on a thick jazz, surrounded in a mansion by beautiful women:

He says one day he'll leave this lady behind, but in the meantime fears she'll kill herself, and fears the revenge of her father, and his conscience. He kills time by filling in the A's and O's in his newspaper.

Gainsbourg seems to be delighted with the results. Irreverent trouble maker, this is a fine example of why he evokes such distaste, among some. Gainsbourg does make attempts to apologize to France Gall, but they never do work together again. He knows that he has hurt the naïve girl, but seems unable to hold himself back.

France Gall singing about oral sex is a metaphor for another theme in Gainsbourg's work: young girls. After reading Lolita, he asked Nabokov for the rights to put the poem at the end to music. The author refused.

Gainsbourg, at least in his songs, seems to have spent plenty of time skulking around young girls. Here, he explores the idea through the old tale of Little Red Riding Hood, taking on the role of the wolf.

Hou Hou Hou indeed. He can be even more subtle and insinuating than that, however.

All he has to do there is make a passing mention of her highschool to put the song in an entirely different light.

A few times he goes back to the poster girl of pedophiles, to the princess of all nymphettes, Lolita, evoking her name more than once.

Dolores on the dotted line:

This fascination with young girls will culminate in one of Gainsbourg's masterpieces, 'The Story of Melody Nelson,' which he wrote with the collaboration of Jean-Claude Vannier.

The story is essentially that a romance, but only the way Gainsbourg can do them. One day, presumably while drunk, Gainsbourg is recklessly driving his Rolls Royce, when suddenly he realizes that he has hit a bicyclist, the young (14 autumns, 15 summers) English Girl, Melody Nelson. On the screen, Melody is portrayed by Gainsbourg's partner, the cult English actress Jane Birkin, her self only 20 years old at the time. Gainsbourg was fifty-one. The story goes: the lovers become tied up despite their differences, but the unfortunate Melody is destined to die young in a plane crash, leaving her older lover to ponder the final resting place of her young, broken body. The complete translated lyrics can be found here, but for this article I would like to focus on one small passage, perhaps one of Gainsbourg's finest, 'L'hôtel particulier.'

Reading it in English is a shame, but then again, its my fault so let's continue. Suffice it to say that the seven tracks that make up Melody Nelson comprise one of the finest rock operas ever conceived, and then promptly ignored. Aside from some popularity in England, and super cool trendy circles in the States (who still don't know what it's all about), this record is mostly unheard of. In France, it is a hallmark.

Gainsbourg's allusions would come back to haunt him in the eighties when his daughter, Charlotte was featured in some of his videos. . . Gainsbourg's notoriousness means he is not ignored by foreign audiences, though he is usually better known for his incredible drinking and smoking habits than for his music. Indeed, it is probably alcohol that drove him to an early grave, while also inspiring some his most passionate songs.

The song 'Intoxicated Man,' whose first line (Je bois, or I drink) is surly a tribute to the Boris Vian song with the same title and first line. It is also an early exploration for him of the effects of alcohol.

That small depiction of a night spent drunk is nothing compared to the song, 'L'alcool,' a stark portrayal of modern urban life, whose worries can be alleviated with the help of Alcohol. It is the story of a young worker too afraid to even approach prostitutes because of his downcast features and hands ruined by his hard work. In his small room he dreams of love and better life, and finds it in the city bars where he drinks. There, he dances in south American night clubs, where 'l'on danse la tête vide et les mains pleines,' or with an empty head and full hands. In alcoholic vapors he forgets his small room, the train he must take, and his castles on clouds become a reality, at least until morning, when the God of Drunks guides his steps back home.

This is a rather depressing portrayal of Paris, and quite unique when juxtaposed with the 'City of Lights' description many are used to. Gainsbourg seems to have a had a hard time adjusting to modern life. In another song, 'Le poinçonneur des lilas,' Gainsbourg takes on the role of a Paris metro worker. This is one of Gainsbourg's most inspired texts, and certainly, in the Francophone world, one of his best known. The music is excellent, a piano sparsely accompanied, and the raspy voice of Gainsbourg conveys all the metro worker's desperation. It is eloquent and understated, not at all like his later work. The metro employee spends his days underground punching tiny hole after tiny hole in train tickets. He eventually dreams of making a tiny hole in his head, in order to never hear about holes again.

These allusions to depression and suicide are not isolated allusions. Indeed, it is, like little girls and alcohol, a recurrent theme in his work.

This boredom with life, with love, leads eventually to its inevitable end, at least in song:

This talk of suicide, this lauding of alcohol, the mere mention of sex with underage girls was enough to drive even France into a frenzy. Still, Gainsbourg remained mostly in the clear, even after the France Gall fiasco. It would take the arrival of Jane Birkin, and their collaboration, 'Je t'aime, moi non plus,' before he was finally censured. The album is was as much a surprise in France as in England upon it's release in 1971. How could a song be censured for sexual content in France of all countries? It would take a ravenous Jane Birkin, moaning over the organs playing in the background, as Gainsbourg tells her he's holding off for just the right moment, before coming.

The song remains perhaps his best known work outside of France, having been interpreted in English by Nick Cave, for instance. The song was originally composed for and with Brigit Bardot, but she was afraid the racy nature of the song would cause a scandal. Not that her marriage to a rich German, and obvious affair with Gainsbourg wouldn't. In any case, the young Anglaise has no such scruples, and the song, re-recorded, was an instant hit.

Gainsbourg would spend many years with Birkin, before his drinking and drug use would drive her away. Charlotte is their daughter. As his drinking escalated, he appeared drunk in public more and more often. In the street, at press conferences, on talk shows, and at award ceremonies. No one was spared his sharp tongue. He called Catherine Denueve Catherine D'occase, the basic meaning being that Catherine the New was actually Catherine the Used. Bizarre behavior, considering she was formally a supporter, collaborator, and friend of his.

But that's the kind of thing people are beginning to suspect from Gainsbourg, who compares himself to Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, adopting the moniker Gainsbarre, to describe his benders and fits of provocation. He does everything from burning money to telling Whitney Houston he wants to fuck her, but always on live T.V. This seems to be a marked depart from his earlier, shy, almost reticent behavior in front of the cameras. It seems he is using provocation to protect his sensitive nature. The fact that he is usually drunk would seem to corroborate this claim. Some would say pretending he has a sensitive nature would be a dubious claim, at best. This is where an exploration of Gainsbourg's lyrics becomes truly interesting however. He has obviously, to take his songs at face value, been hurt by women in his life. Coupled with his conviction that he is ugly, this left scars on his psyche that come out in his art.

It's never said, to my knowledge, who this was written for and its quite possible that the actual girl never existed, though the experiences that could lead one to writing such a song certainly did. But this is some of his earlier work, when he was still tame. What does Gainsbarre have to say? It's much uglier.

It gets still worse with `Sex Shop'

All this misogyny will culminate with his second great opus, 'L'homme à tête de chou,' the story of the Beautiful Marilou, the shampoo girl who seduces him with her pagan beauty and soapy hands, and who he eventually kills out of jealousy with a fire extinguisher. In fact, this album is practically a perfect resumé of the man's work, its innovative music overlaid with lyrics that explore feminine masturbation, love, jealousy, and murder. The lyrics in English can be found here. He plays with single syllables, repeating them in different words over and over until they become like a mantra; plays on words, sounds and images are thick in this work.
It is this kind of word play that should interest you if all of the debauchery does not. Perhaps one of the reasons he remains so unknown to English speakers is that his work, thus his ideas, are so untranslatable. Take for instance this line:

D'abord on s'dit vous
Et puis on s'dit tout

Only two lines, but it's untranslatable. First of all, it's a play on words on a construction that does not exist in English, the Tu and Vous form, or the formal and informal versions of you. One possible translation gives

At first one says you
Then one tells all

But that is not sufficient. Another could be

First we say you respectfully
Then you informally

But that isn't really it at all.

Then his use of sound. Let's take 'La Javanaise' as a case in point. Here it is in French. Even if you don't understand French, read the text noticing the J, V, U, and N/M sounds.

J'avoue
j'en ai
Bavé
pas vous
mon amour
avant
d'avoir
eu vent
de vous
mon amour-
ne vous déplaise
en dansant la Javanaise
nous nous aimions
le temps d'une chanson-
a votre
avis
qu'avons
nous vu
de l'amour
de vous
a moi
vous m'a-
vez eu
mon amour- hélas
avril
en vain
me voue
a l'amour
j'avais
envie
de voir
en vous
cet amour- la vie
ne vaut
d'être
vécue
sans amour
mais c'est
vous qui
l'avez
voulu
mon amour

Gainsbourg was more than just an eloquent cynic. After all, I have been referring to him as sensitive all this time. Underneath all the spleen and bile lies a man as we have seen hurt by women, but still open to love all the same. Even years after their breakup, he would defend Jane Birkin under any circumstance.

His other romances, though they come to him easily, do not satisfy. He is known to have repeated the famous maxim about cynics knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing when speaking of himself. In `Amours sans Amour' (Love Without Love), he laments:

In the late seventies he made a reggae album with Rita Marley and The Wailers. Bob Marley is not pleased when he learns what Serge made Rita sing. He smokes copious amounts of marijuana, and manages to redo the French national anthem in a reggae version. This is not the first time he angers the right wing in France, but it was the most serious. At a concert in Strasbourg, the front seats are filled with former soldiers in the Algerian War for Independence. Gainsbourg raises his fist, tells the crowd he has re-given `La Marsaillaise' its original sense, and urges them to sing along. They do, and he leaves the stage in tears.

In the eighties, Gainsbourg would begin to lose it. A lifetime of alcohol and the omnipresent Gitane cigarettes had taken their toll. While telling the singer of the Rita Mitsoukos that she was a slut for having done hardcore porno, he gets no further than the word slut, unable to defend himself against her retorts. He stumbles over words, seeming incapable to express himself. He is visibly old, his face haggard and drawn, a parody of himself.

He never takes the stage again (having quit it once before for good in the late fifties, much like Boris Vian who also angered the Right) but still causes controversy when `Lemon Incest' comes out. Apparently, he thought the French `un zest de citron' sounded enough like incest to make a song out of it. He does, then has his young daughter sing parts of it. The music is a Chopin air, but the lyrics are all Gainsbourg. He is taken aback when asked if he sleeps with his daughter. `Of course not.'

His last two albums are full of provocative lyrics, many of them done in complete bad taste. He is now well known for being a rascal and causing general sorts of trouble, inciting controversy, drinking, and smoking. One night, in 1991, Serge Gainsbourg died of a heart attack. The French president at the time, François Mitterand, compared him to Baudelaire. His fans gave an even more appropriate tribute by covering his tombstone with bottles of Pastis and packets of Gitanes.

-Article by Alex Chabot

Translations of more Gainsbourg songs in English

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