Serge Gainsbourg (1928–1991) was the Paris-born singer-songwriter who moved through chanson, pop, reggae, funk, and disco across a career unlike any other in French music. Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971) is the masterpiece — Beck, Air, and Stereolab all took notes. Explore Serge Gainsbourg vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Lucien Ginsburg, performing as Serge Gainsbourg, was born in Paris on April 2, 1928 to Russian Jewish parents who had emigrated to France in 1919 following the Russian Revolution. His family survived the Nazi occupation of France during World War II by relocating to Limoges with falsified identification documents. He launched his recording career in 1958 with the debut Du Chant à la Une!... Across his multi-decade career he evolved across multiple musical styles - beginning with chanson française traditions, evolving through pop, rock, reggae (Aux armes et caetera 1979, the controversial reggae adaptation of La Marseillaise recorded in Kingston with Sly & Robbie), funk, disco, and electronic. His 1971 landmark Histoire de Melody Nelson is widely cited as one of the most important French popular music albums of all time and has been influential on contemporary popular music (influence on Beck, Air, Stereolab, and many others). His controversial 1969 duet Je t'aime... moi non plus with English actress Jane Birkin (his partner from 1968-1980, mother of his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg) - featuring sexually-explicit content - was banned by the Vatican and broadcasters across Europe. He had parallel work as a film director (Je t'aime moi non plus 1976, Stan the Flasher 1990). He died of a heart attack on March 2, 1991 at age 62 at his Paris home. His foundational influence on French popular music and broader contemporary popular music is widely cited.
Serge Gainsbourg's sound combines French pop, chanson française, pop, rock, reggae, funk, disco, electronic, jazz, and chamber pop with his distinctive spoken-sung vocal delivery, virtuosic compositional approaches across multiple styles, and lyrical content addressing sexuality, mortality, French politics, irony, and broader social commentary drawing on French literary traditions.
Original Philips Records, Mercury Records, and Polygram pressings of the Serge Gainsbourg catalog are foundational items in French popular music collecting, with collector premiums on rare pressings.
Listeners new to Serge Gainsbourg typically start with Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971).
