Serge Gainsbourg frequently had what you might charitably describe as complicated relationships with his female collaborators. There always seemed to be a problem: a joke or a satire on Gainsbourg’s part to which they weren’t entirely party, a level of controversy that Gainsbourg was willing to provoke but they were not. There was the 18-year-old France Gall, who he duped into singing a song that was evidently – to all but the innocent Gall herself – about oral sex, causing her to temporarily retreat from public life in mortification, and furnished with a succession of other songs that appeared to be viciously mocking their singer as she sang them (the Eurovision-winning Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, depicted her as a hopelessly naive puppet, whose fans didn’t have a clue what they were doing). There was Brigitte Bardot, with whom he had a passionate affair, who first recorded the scandalous duet Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus, then refused to allow it to be released, fearful of precisely how scandalous it was going to be. There was his daughter Charlotte, whom he corralled into recording a duet called Lemon Incest, then cast in a film, Charlotte for Ever, in which he played her father, reducing her to tears on the set during a scene in which he undressed her. And there was Vanessa Paradis, their working relationship so fraught that Gainsbourg took to calling her Vanessa L’Enfer.
But that never happened with Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. They were a couple for 12 years: their working partnership outlived their separation in 1980, lasting until Gainsbourg’s death in 1991. The standard line is to call her his muse on account of the songs he wrote for her – Jane B, Ma Chérie Jane, La Fille aux Claquettes, Ballade de Johnny-Jane, Lost Song, Dépressive – or the songs she inspired: Birkin performed the role of, and was clearly the model for, the titular heroine in Gainsbourg’s masterpiece, the 1971 concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson. But the word “muse” implies a certain passivity that sells Birkin hopelessly short: she felt far more like Gainsbourg’s co-conspirator. It was Birkin who modelled Gainsbourg’s iconic latterday image. There seemed to be nothing he could come up with that she would baulk at. Singing the song that Bardot had refused to release, and riding out the resultant scandal, which grew far bigger than even Bardot had feared, encompassing not just radio bans, but condemnation from the Vatican. Demonstrating La Décadanse, Gainsbourg’s attempt at instituting a dance craze that involved the male lead grasping his female partner’s breasts. Being photographed naked and chained to a radiator for Lui magazine, complete with accompanying text by Gainsbourg describing her as his “little hermaphrodite”. Starring in the 1976 film that shared Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus’ title, which explored the doomed relationship between a boyish girl and a homosexual trucker, involved a great deal of anal sex, and effectively scuppered Birkin’s acting career for the next couple of years. Singing the astonishing Vie Mort et Résurrection d’un Amour Passion, a 1978 song that seemed to lay their crumbling relationship bare in the starkest terms imaginable: “We are fucked … I told you ‘kill me, kill me if you’re a man’, but you’re just a mug, because you never could.”
Birkin had already enjoyed a small degree of notoriety – and evidenced a distinct lack of timidity – as an actress in Britain before she met Gainsbourg: she had appeared naked in both Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up and the 1968 film Wonderwall, the latter remembered less today for her role than its experimental George Harrison-penned soundtrack. But it was her association with Gainsbourg that made her a star. He encouraged her to sing, making a feature of her high, untutored voice: if the notes Birkin issued occasionally wobbled, Gainsbourg’s songs somehow made that work, playing on her youth, supposed innocence and her Englishness, casting her as the perfect vocal foil to his own husky sprechgesang. Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus was the succès de scandale of 1969 – it was Gainsbourg’s only hit in the UK, reaching No 1 despite the fact that the label that initially released it withdrew it in the face of a BBC ban – but they made far better records together than that. Birkin’s 1973 album Di Doo Dah was a brilliant confection of symphonic pop, filled with dark, strange songs every bit as fantastic as those on the albums Gainsbourg released under his own name in the early 70s, arguably the height of his powers: listen to the superb Encore Lui for proof. The 1977 single Yesterday Yes a Day boasted one of Gainsbourg’s lushest, saddest tunes and the title track of the following year’s Ex-Fan des Sixties was impossibly beautiful featherweight soft-rock, with lyrics that mourned the titular decade’s casualties. She had a line in fabulous, orchestrated songs with melodies inspired by classical music: Physique et Sans Issue, Lost Song, Baby Alone in Babylone.
You might have expected her musical career to end with Gainsbourg’s death – Birkin had never made a record without his involvement – but instead it flourished, thanks to a combination of albums on which she re-recorded Gainsbourg’s songs, and collections of original material, of which 2008’s marvellously understated Enfants d’Hiver may be the best. She benefitted from Gainsbourg’s posthumous discovery in non-Francophone countries during the 90s, which rightly transformed him from being viewed derisively – a one-hit wonder, the author of a solitary smutty novelty smash who Private Eye satirised as Serge Forward – into a hugely influential figure who subsequently left his mark on everyone from Massive Attack to the Arctic Monkeys. As Gainsbourg’s oeuvre began attracting fresh attention, so did Birkin, both as a style icon and a singer. You can get a sense of the kind of regard she became belatedly held in by the guest artists attracted to her 2004 album Rendez-Vous, who ranged from Bryan Ferry to acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter Feist. The latter turned up again on Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited, a collection of English-language covers of Gainsbourg’s songs that saw Birkin collaborating with Franz Ferdinand.
Even so, Jane Birkin still feels faintly underrated. Her 70s and 80s solo albums aren’t as well-known as Gainsbourg’s own, which makes them ripe for rediscovery: he certainly didn’t save his best work for himself. And perhaps she underrated herself: in her interviews, she had a tendency to make more of Gainsbourg’s genius than her own contribution. “It was very flattering to have the most beautiful songs, probably, in the French language written for one … How much talent did I really have? Perhaps not much,” ran a typical quote, which seems unfair. Her lack of vocal training and her naive but powerful style meant no one sang Serge Gainsbourg’s songs like her, which means she left a permanent mark on pop music: if someone in 2023 describes as duet as “very Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin”, you know exactly what they mean, what kind of insouciant cool they’re reaching for.
