SERGE GAINSBOURG. The singer Serge Gainsbourg, known as much for his music as for his escapades, is at the origin of words which are still debated in 2022.
[Mis à jour le 05 avril 2022 à 20h06] Can we still listen to Serge Gainsbourg’s songs in 2022 with a clear conscience? The question arises, as the singer is again in the spotlight this Tuesday, April 5, 2022 with the rebroadcast, on France 4, of the documentary Gainsbourg, a lifetime. Undisputed and indisputable genius of music, some of his words are more sensitive today than during his lifetime. “My father would be condemned, for everything he did. Everything is so politically correct today. So boring. So predictable. And everyone is afraid of what will happen if he goes too far”, confided her daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourgabout the controversies that his father’s work could raise today, in the columns of the British site The Guardian.
Provocative, Serge Gainsbourg has always been. Already, during his lifetime, the singer of Lemon Incest, his texts and almost all his public appearances have caused much ink to flow. So in 2021, at the time of the release of speech, #Metoo and #Balancetonporc, then the Olivier Duhamel affair and the flood of incest testimonies, what are the songs of Serge Gainsbourg that continue to be debated? ?
It is the polemical song par excellence of Serge Gainsbourg’s repertoire: Lemon Incest. Released in 1984, the title, which he says is a platonic declaration of love to his 12-year-old child, created an uproar. Serge Gainsbourg will have to defend himself from accusations of pedophilia. Its clip is even censored by MTV and is still a subject of debate today. “Of course, he plays with the provocation. But he is excessively sincere and honest in his talk. This song, Lemon IncestI would like to sing it again and at the same time, it’s true today, I understand that it raises….. It’s such a shocking subject that it’s delicate in fact, it’s very delicate “, explains Charlotte Gainsbourg, her daughter, in this sense, facing Augustin Trapernard in Boomerang on France Inter this Tuesday, March 2. And to add: “I like her very much because on my side, she is so innocent, it’s ‘hears.”
Among Serge Gainsbourg’s other hits to have caused controversy at the time and which are still in question today, the song written in 1966 The lollipopssung by a France Gall aged 18 at the time. “Annie likes lollipops, anise lollipops…”, sang the young woman, who assured at the time that she had not grasped the double meaning of the lyrics of this song which would nevertheless become one of her best known. . “When he wrote the little song, I saw myself. It was the story of a little girl who went to get her anise lollipops. But at the same time, I felt that it was not clear. C was Gainsbourg anyway”, confided the artist to Parisian in 2015. And to add: “I did not understand the double meaning and I can assure you that at the time, no one understood the double meaning.
In addition to his loves for very young women, Serge Gainsbourg was also accused of racism after the song To arms and so onreleased in March 1979. A reinterpretation of the French anthem, The Marseillaise, reggae version. At the time, the title was accused of anti-militarism and the man with the cabbage head accused of anti-Semitism by Michel Droit, journalist at Figaro magazine. A song and a national scandal for the singer, who defends himself by saying that “the Marseillaise is a revolutionary song”, like “reggae”. The political class debates, the conservatives and the soldiers are moved: we do not touch the national anthem.
Originally the song I love you…me neither should have been sung by Brigitte Bardot. But the husband of the singer refuses and already, the scandal surrounds this title. It is finally to Jane Birkin, 20, that Serge Gainsbourg will offer the piece, in 1968, the beginning of their romance. I love you…me neither, which mixes the carnal groans of the two artists, will be described as obscene by the Vatican and boycotted by Italian, Swedish and Spanish radio stations. The Philips label refuses to market the song and French radio stations do not broadcast it. “I go, I go and I come. Between your kidneys. I go and I come. Between your kidneys. And I hold back”: the text, at the time, does not pass. What would it be today?
If Serge Gainsbourg liked to provoke his audience by writing songs that explicitly talk about sex, the most sulphurous would perhaps be Love and The Beat. After the moans of Jane Birkin In Je t’aime… moi non plus, it is the cries of Bambou, his last companion, that we hear behind the voice of Serge Gainsbourg, who sings: “First, I want with my tongue (.. .) My beautiful torn child. There I hit the sore spot. Wait, I’ll dwell on it (…) It’s time to get down to business. Seriously, my pretty doll. You want an overdose. fuck here I introduce myself.”