Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971), Cannabis (1970)

Often referred to as the "dirty old man" of pop music, Serge Gainsbourg was without a doubt one of the most important figures in modern French music. Gainsbourg's music is a little hard to classify. He mixed the elements of jazz and popular music quite seamlessly throughout his career. Over the span of his career, he worked with many other famous french musicians such as France Gall and Brigitte Bardot. The thing that he was most known for was the sexual nature of much of his music. His most famous album, Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971) was a concept album about a relationship with a young woman. The cover of the album leads the listener to believe that the character Melody Nelson was a Lolita-esque girl. The cover, as pictured above, features Gainsbourg's wife, Jane Birkin. Gainsbourg often collaborated with Jane Birkin on his albums.

Histoire de Melody Nelson is the first Gainsbourg album I will have available. Though, the album runs quite short, (only 27:57) I think it's quite good, and a great example of Gainsbourg's sound.



The video below is an example of some of Gainsbourg's antics. In this clip, Gainsbourg says to Whitney Houston on live TV that he "wants to fuck her."




The second album that I will have available in this post is Gainsbourg's soundtrack to the 1970 film called Cannabis. Cannabis was a mafia movie in which both Gainsbourg and his wife Jane Birkin starred in. Though I have never actually watched the film, I am a big fan of the soundtrack. The guitar work on the album sounds great, and simply from reading reviews of it, I'm guessing that the music was probably the best thing about film.

I kind of wish I knew more about the picture just for the sake of this post, but since the music is great by itself, I don't think that it's completely necessary. The imdb page for the movie is here, though. Cannabis

Well, that's it for now. Enjoy!

Melody Nelson Track Listing
1. Melody 7:32
2. Ballade de Melody Nelson 2:00
3. Valse de Melody 1:31
4. Ah! Melody 1:47
5. L'hôtel particulier 4:05
6. En Melody 3:25
7. Cargo Culte 7:37

get it!


Cannabis Track Listing
1. Cannabis 2:27
2. Première Blessure 2:25
3. Deuxième Homme 1:10
4. Jane Dans la Nuit 1:24
5. Danger 2:09
6. Chanvre Indien 2:28
7. Avant de Mourir 5:25
8. Arabique 1:31
9. Cannis 2:28
10. I Want to Feel Crazy 1:42
11. Dernière Blessure 1:25
12. Piège 3:11
13. Cannabis-Bis 1:49

get it!