"Comment te dire adieu"--Probably my favorite
Serge Gainsbourg song, as performed by
Françoise Hardy.
One benefit of this video--other than getting to hear and see Françoise Hardy perform--is that someone transcribed the lyrics of the song for the viewer. Thus, even if you don't know French well or much at all, you get a sense of the cleverness of the words she is singing.
I'm sorry, but
Jimmy Sommerville cries himself to sleep at night wishing he could be
this good.
* * *
Oh, and here are some more to choose from, but
hélas, I can't embed these like I want to.
Catch them while you can on
YouTube:
I especially like the video for "Ballade de Melody Nelson." If I recall correctly, it was made in the early '70s for a French TV special, it seems very modern with it's repeated "video sample" of Jane Birkin tossing her hair everytime she sings "Melodeeeee Nelsonnnnn."
"Sea, Sex, and Sun" is terrific disco froth. No explanation needed. And "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Requiem pour un con" ("Requiem for a jerk") show the grittier side of Serge, one that isn't so busy playing the pervy ol' troll.
What to make of all the leering and "luridity" of ol' Serge, though? In the biography,
Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes, Sylvie Simmons reports Jane Birkin saying that Serge was actually quite
pudique. (Jane claims that there's no English equivalent for this word; my French-English dictionary says it means "modest." Close enough.) And yet he loved to write songs with suggestive lyrics and themes--"Les sucettes," sung by poor
France Gall, who definitely did not get that the song's subtext referred to oral sex; "Melody Nelson" and "Sea, Sex, and Sun" both telling the tale of older men involved in relationships with Lolitas; and "Lemon Incest," a duet with his pubescent daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, that namechecks a thankfully only metaphysical love that dares speak its name in the title.
Was Serge a creep? I think he was more self-consciously creepy than an actual creep, although the latter musical example certain gets up the nose of my sensibilities, to be sure. From the sound of it, ol' Serge liked to provoke, to shock, to upset. That's all well and good; sometimes we all need to be shaken out of our mental ruts and rigidity, whether we want to or not. I kind of loved a few years ago when there were those "marriage-ins" in
San Francisco, and a certain element of our overstimulated, overly testy population, got so worked up about it, that somehow same-sex couples marrying
en masse and with bravado was the ultimate scourge to human society. Too, too funny.
And, after a while, too, too easy. Some people are so easy to shock; it makes it hardly a challenge. In the case of Serge, while that tendency to shock probably came from his outsider status (an intelligent man operating in a frothy, "baby pop" world; his homely, not-matinee-idol looks; his Jewishness in a post-war France that would just as soon have forgotten about its past role in the war), after a while, late in life, the repeated attempts to provoke just seemed too self-conscious, too eager, and, ultimately, too desperate. Where's the fun in that?
Nonetheless, in general, I love Serge's music, his lyrics (what I can understand of them at least), and the different personae he created to convey his songs. I just wish he had left poor France Gall alone. She had to be pretty innocent--or really dense--not to get the subtext of "
Les sucettes."
But it's kind of sad all the same. And, again, too, too easy.
