With a rep for being a droll smut-peddler who reveled in
misogynistic objectification, Serge Gainsbourg was an unlikely savior for the
female singers of sixties French pop. Yet, that is basically what he did when
he gave the cheerfully innocent France Gall some dirty double-entendres to
chirp and played into Francois Hardy’s darker persona with songs of melancholic
doubt that revealed the poetic complexities of his writing.
Ace Records’ new compilation, Vamps et Vampire: The Songs of Serge Gainsbourg, gives ample airing
to the variety in the man’s music as voiced by some of the many women who’ve
interpreted it. For such singers, doing a Serge song was a fast track to
scoring a hit and a bit of edge. Not
every singer on this 25-track compilation fully grasps the Gainsbourg way, and
this can be particularly apparent when they cover songs he also recorded in his
sneering, Gitanes-stained croon.
France Gall’s hit version of “Les Sucettes” is a Disney soundtrack cast-off
compared to Serge’s sexed-up psychedelia. That probably only makes her version more
subversive, which no doubt delighted the composer. However, the very best
tracks are the ones on which the artists slip into more appropriate character.
Brigitte Bardot is, of course, the very best Gainsbourg interpreter, infusing way
ahead-of-their time rockers like “Harley Davidson” and “Contact” with the fizz
he never would have mustered. April March delivers the wiry rocker “Laisse
Tomber les Filles” with attitudinal glee. Marianne Faithfull sings the regretful
“Hier Ou Demain” with a stiff upper lip that can’t mask the sadness underneath
it. The cracks in Jane Birkin’s limited voice draw the eroticism out of “Jane
B.” as they did with her duet and Serge’s duet on “Je t'aime… Moi Non Plus”. That most famous/infamous of
Gainsbourg records is not included here, keeping the all-female voice pure.
The only time Vamps et Vampire: The Songs of Serge
Gainsbourg really falters is when it stumbles into the eighties with tracks
such as Isabelle Adjani’s “Pull Marine” and Birkin’s “Con C’est Con Ces
Consequences”, both utterly sabotaged by the decade’s horrid pop production
follies. These moments almost made me wish this album’s subtitle had been The Sixties Songs of Serge Gainsbourg,
but then we wouldn’t have gotten that amazing April March track.
