In 1969, Gainsbourg recorded the best-known version of the 1967 song, “Je t’aime… moi non plus” (French for “I love you… me neither”) with Jane Birkin.
The duet reached number one in the UK, the first foreign language song to do so, but was banned in several countries due to its overtly sexual content.
Few knew that the tune was originally written by Serge Gainsbourg for Brigitte Bardot (older than Birkin by 12 years).
In 1976, Gainsbourg directed Birkin in an erotic film of the same name.
After a disappointing, witless date with Bardot, she “phoned and demanded as a penance” that he write, for her, “the most beautiful love song he could imagine.” That night he wrote, “Je t’aime” and “Bonnie and Clyde.”
They recorded an arrangement of “Je t’aime” by Michel Colombier at Paris studio in a two-hour session in glass booth; the engineer William Flageollet said there was “heavy petting.” However, news of the recording reached the press and Bardot’s husband, German businessman Gunter Sachs, called for the single to be withdrawn. Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release it. He complied: “The music is very pure. For the first time in my life, I write a love song and it’s taken badly.”
In 1968, Gainsbourg and British actress Jane Birkin began a relationship when they met on the set of the film Slogan. After filming, he asked her to record the song with him. Birkin had heard the Bardot version and thought it “so hot.” She said: “I only sang it because I didn’t want anybody else to sing it,” jealous of his sharing recording studio with someone else.
Gainsbourg asked her to sing an octave higher than Bardot, “so you’ll sound like a little boy” It was recorded in arrangement by Arthur Greenslade in studio at Marble Arch.
Birkin said she “got carried away with the heavy breathing – so much so, in fact, that I was told to calm down, which meant that at one point I stopped breathing altogether. If you listen to the record now, you can still hear that little gap.”
There was media speculation that they had recorded live sex, to which Gainsbourg told Birkin, “Thank goodness it wasn’t, otherwise I hope it would have been a long-playing record.”
It was released in February 1969, with plain cover and the words “Interdit aux moins de 21 ans” (forbidden to those under the age of 21). The record company changed the label from Philips to its subsidiary Fontana.
Gainsbourg also asked Marianne Faithfull to record the song with him; she said: “Hah! He asked everybody”. Others approached included Valérie Lagrange and Mireille Darc. Bardot regretted not releasing her version, and her friend Jean-Louis Remilleux persuaded her to released it in 1986.
Inspired by Salvador Dali
The title was inspired by Salvador Dalí comment: “Picasso is Spanish, me too. Picasso is a genius, me too. Picasso is a communist, me neither.” Gainsbourg claimed it was an “anti-fuck” song about the desperation and impossibility of physical love. The lyrics are written as dialogue between lovers during sex.
Phrases include:
“Je vais et je viens, entre tes reins” (“I go and I come, between your loins”)
“Tu es la vague, moi l’île nue” (“You are the wave, me the naked island”)
“L’amour physique est sans issue” (“Physical love is hopeless” [Gainsbourg sings ‘sensationnel’ in another version)
“Je t’aime, moi non plus” is translated as “I love you – me not anymore” in the Pet Shop Boys’ version. The lyrics are sung, spoken and whispered over baroque organ and guitar track in C major, with “languid, almost over pretty, chocolate box melody”.
The lyrical were lost on late-1960s Brits, and what they heard was an expertly stroked organ, orgasmic groans and soft-focus melody, the musical equivalent of Vaseline-smeared Emmanuelle movie. It was confirmation that life across the Channel was one of unchecked lubriciousness, and Je t’aime became as essential part of any successful seduction as chilled bottle of Blue Nun.
The eroticism was declared offensive. The lyrics are thought to refer to the taboo of sex without love, and were delivered in a breathy, suggestive style. The Observer Monthly Music magazine called it “pop equivalent of an Emmanuelle movie.”
When the version with Bardot was recorded, the French press reported that it was an “audio vérité”. France Dimanche said the “groans, sighs, and Bardot’s little cries of pleasure give the impression you’re listening to two people making love.”
Gainsbourg first played it in public in Paris restaurant after they recorded it. Birkin said that “as it began to play all you could hear were the knives and forks being put down. ‘I think we have a hit record’, he said.”
Pop as Great PR Man for Song
The song culminates in orgasm sounds by Birkin.
This is why it was banned from radio in Spain, Sweden, Brazil, the UK, Italy, and Portugal, banned before 11 pm in France, not played by many radio stations in the US because it was deemed too risqué, and denounced by the Vatican and the L’Osservatore Romano. One report claimed the Vatican excommunicated the record executive who released it in Italy. Birkin says Gainsbourg called the Pope “our greatest PR man”.
Birkin later said: “It wasn’t a rude song at all. I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The English just didn’t understand it. I’m still not sure they know what it means.”
The song was a commercial success in Europe selling 3 million by October 1969. By 1986, it had sold 4 million copies.
Gainsbourg arranged a deal with Major Minor Records and on re-release it reached number one, the first banned number one single in the UK and the first single in foreign language to top the charts.
It stayed on the UK chart for 31 weeks.
It even made the Top 100 in the US, reaching number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Mercury Records, the US distributor, faced criticism that the song was “obscene” and there was limited airplay, limiting US sales to around 150,000.
It was re-released in the UK in 1974 on the Atlantic Records subsidiary Antic Records and charted again peaking at No. 31 and charting for 9 weeks. By August 1969, the single had sold 300,000 copies in Italy, while in France in 1969 alone sold 400,000 copies. In UK sales were over 250,000.By 1996, it had sold 6 million copies worldwide.
In 1969, the Hollywood 101 Strings Orchestra released 7-inch record single (on A/S Records label) with two versions: the A-side featured a fully instrumental recording while the B-side had sexually suggestive vocalizations done by Bebe Bardon.[29] The first covers were instrumentals, “Love at first sight”, after the original was banned; the first version by British group named Sounds Nice (featuring Tim Mycroft on keyboard) became a top 20 hit. The group’s name “sounds nice” actually represents the two words Paul McCartney said when he heard this instrumental cover of the song). The first parody was written in 1970 by Gainsbourg and Marcel Mithois. Titled “Ça”, it was recorded by Bourvil and Jacqueline Maillan, Bourvil’s last release before his death.
Other comedy versions were made by Frankie Howerd and June Whitfield, Judge Dread, and Gorden Kaye and Vicki Michelle, stars of the BBC TV comedy ‘Allo ‘Allo!, in character.
Je t’aime has been sampled in other songs, including: “A Fair Affair (Je T’Aime)” by Misty Oldland; “Guitar Song” by Texas, and version of “Breathe” in Kylie Minogue’s 2003 Money Can’t Buy concert at Hammersmith Apollo in London.
The song influenced the 1975 disco classic “Love to Love You Baby” by Donna Summer and producer Giorgio Moroder.
Producer A. J. Cervantes, who previously worked for Casablanca Records, suggested an idea of Donna Summer recording the song. Bogart initially rejected the idea. Cervantes’ record label Butterfly Records released the disco rendition as “Je t’aime” by an all-female disco group Saint Tropez in August 1977, the first disco rendition of the song as part of the album of the same name, Je T’aime (1977).
In 1978, Casablanca Records released the Summer and Moroder duet rendition of “Je t’aime” in 15-minute version for the film Thank God It’s Friday.
Mireille Mathieu
Of the same age as Birkin (born July 33) Mathieu was a beter singer, who has recorded over 1200 songs in 11 languages, with more than 122 million records sold worldwide.
