walking upstream…
Serge Gainsbourg
photo: claude truong-ngoc · cc by-sa 3.0 ↗Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg spent three decades restlessly working through nearly every genre French pop could hold — chanson, yé-yé, funk, reggae, disco — welding literate, often filthy wordplay to melodies borrowed as readily from Chopin and Dvořák as from American jazz. He turned scandal into a career strategy, from the heavy breathing of 'Je t'aime... moi non plus' to the incest-baiting title of a duet with his own daughter, and by his death in 1991 he'd become one of the most influential songwriters in French pop, sampled and covered across every genre that followed. His catalog reads less like a discography than a running argument that pop music could be disposable and genuinely literary at once.
the sound in question
1969
Je t'aime... moi non plusSerge Gainsbourg
walk the tributaries ↓
Boris Vian1950s · Chanson / Jazz
Gainsbourg said seeing Boris Vian perform at the cabaret Milord l'Arsouille was the moment he decided he could 'do something in this minor art' — Vian, already a novelist and jazz trumpeter treating pop songwriting as a legitimate showcase for wit and provocation, gave Gainsbourg permission to abandon painting for pop. Vian went on to personally champion Gainsbourg's breakthrough single in print, a direct hand extended from mentor to protégé.
listen: upstream & here
1954
Le DéserteurBoris Vian
1958
Le Poinçonneur des LilasSerge Gainsbourg
listen forPlay Vian's own deadpan, satirical 'Le Déserteur' against Gainsbourg's 'Le Poinçonneur des Lilas' — both take a plain, almost bureaucratic character (a deserting soldier, a bored metro ticket-puncher) and let a light, conversational vocal delivery carry a much darker undertow.
Frédéric Chopin1830s–40s · Romantic / Classical
As a classically trained pianist, Gainsbourg drew on 'great music, from Chopin to Dvořák' as raw material throughout his career, most literally on 'Lemon Incest,' whose melody is Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 3, nicknamed 'Tristesse,' slowed into a spoken-sung pop cadence.
listen: upstream & here
1832
Étude Op. 10, No. 3 "Tristesse"Frédéric Chopin
1984
Lemon IncestSerge Gainsbourg
listen forPlay the opening theme of the Étude Op. 10, No. 3 straight into 'Lemon Incest' — it's the same melodic line note for note, a direct lift rather than a loose echo.
Antonín Dvořák1880s–90s · Classical / Romantic
Gainsbourg's habit of raiding 'great music, from Chopin to Dvořák' reached its most direct expression on his 1968 ode to Brigitte Bardot, 'Initials B.B.,' which builds its entire orchestral hook directly from the first movement of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 'From the New World.'
listen: upstream & here
1893
Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" (I. Adagio – Allegro molto)Antonín Dvořák
1968
Initials B.B.Serge Gainsbourg
listen forListen for the surging string-and-brass theme from the first movement of the New World Symphony, then hear it reappear almost unchanged as the pounding orchestral riff that opens and drives 'Initials B.B.'