THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,801) Serge Gainsbourg — “Initials B.B.”
“Initials B.B.” is Serge Gainsbourg’s (see #1,366, 1,788) iconic paean to his departed lover, the iconic Brigitte Bardot. Jeremy Allen writes:
If [Jane] Birkin [see #1,604, 1,788] was the defining relationship of Gainsbourg’s life, her arrival was timely, too. Nursing a broken heart after amorous assignations with Bardot came to an abrupt end, Gainsbourg did what any other shameless, prolific songwriter would do – he wrote an album all about it. Initials BB was conceptually lamentable, though the title track is a banger. The main hook is stolen from Dvořák’s New World Symphony.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/jan/15/10-of-the-best-serge-gainsbourg
I daresay that Antonín would have approved.
The Babylangues site muses:
The song, spoken poetically amid dark, dramatic brass and strings, recalls his passionate, short-lived affair with 60s beauty icon Brigitte Bardot, culminating in their supposed parting in Spain. Gainsbourg’s lyrics use extremely atmospheric imagery to evoke the colours, scents, and sounds of the seductive and smoky 60s backdrop to his encounters with Bardot. With a nod to her Guerlain perfume, it’s no surprise the song was used for Guerlain adverts in 2009 and 2011. We especially like the first lines: “One night, while I was moping around some English pub in the heart of London…” which contrasts perfectly with Gainsbourg’s bright “vision” of Bardot. . . . [T]his opening was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The [Raven] . . . .
https://job-in-france.babylangues.com/french-music/initials-b-b-serge-gainsbourg/
DoubleZ adds:
[The song is] superb . . . a song of songs that represents the secret relationship and separation with Brigitte Bardot. The narration features the author’s revelation, which is akin to falling in love, to the point of describing his almost naked partner. [It] perfectly combines sensuality and triumph in an almost cinematic Baroque Pop, reminiscent of the work of the legendary Ennio Morricone [see #1,737].
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/doublez/album/9721-initials-bb/
Of the album, Ben Cardew writes:
So few people would have expected a French man who turned 40 in 1968 to make one of the most elegant albums of the decade. Recorded largely in London, Initials B.B. marries Serge Gainsbourg’s peerless sense of dramatic melody with some of the finest orchestral pop production the 1960s could offer, incorporating elements of jazz, yé-yé, chanson, and the baroque pop of the Left Bank with just a soupçon of Rubber Soul–era Beatles. . . . [It is a] taut, 31-minute masterpiece. . . . It evokes London fog and Parisian élan, contemporary pop nous and eternal orchestral splendor, in a way that makes even the most modish Anglo-American pop acts of the era look spectacularly ungainly.
https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1960s/?page=5
DoubleZ adds:
In 1968, Gainsbourg released the album Initials B.B as a tribute to this passionate relationship with Brigitte Bardot . . . . It . . . [had] been worked on since 1965 . . . . Gainsbourg renewed his formula, abandoning the Jazz and Cabaret spirit of his early days for something more Pop Rock. . . . His relationship with Brigitte Bardot was to be an amazing source of inspiration, which considerably accelerated the creation of Initials B.B. in the last months. The album was recorded in London, accompanied by producers/arrangers Giogio Gomelsky, Arthur Greenslade, David Withaker and Michel Colombier, as well as some twenty different musicians. . . . Brigitte Bardot is present on many of the backing vocals, but the actress was not very good with his voice, so these collaborations are more iconic than anything else. . . . This album marks the beginning of Gainsbourg’s legend . . . .
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/doublez/album/9721-initials-bb/
Daniel Browne informs us sick puppies that:
[F]or those sick puppies interested in exploring [Gainsbourg’s] entire catalog, this collaboration with then-lover Brigitte Bardot is a good place to start. Many of his most infamous songs (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Comic Strip,”) are here, and the lesser-known numbers achieve the same giddy decadence. Yes, the subject matter is transgressive, the performances often silly, but long after the initial shock wears off, Gainsbourg’s work continues to surprise and delight. The sensuous melodies and sumptuous arrangements aspire to the visual; they are little technocolor movies in sound. Moreover, Gainsbourg was perhaps the only songwriter of an earlier tradition to wholeheartedly embrace the wild and adventurous spirit of ’60s rock. . . . Initials B.B. continues to sound as stylish and mod as it must have the day it was released. At 31 minutes, it is sure to leave both hedonists and former teenyboppers wanting more.
Gainsbourg silly? Embrace it. Offler writes:
If Gainsbourg was anything, he was a lover, a bonvivant, jester, a trickster — but not a musician. It’s as if you’d complain that a Zappa [see #793] album is somewhat silly at places. Gainsbourg’s music always had an element of irony and sarcasm, and that’s the main fun about it, it’s not the music per se, which is not so much creative as it is recreative. Maybe it’s just a language problem — the wit becomes clear in the lyrics, and even they have always a hidden sense (hint: it’s all about sex). Anyway, this is one of Gainsbourg’s most iconic and typical albums.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/serge-gainsbourg/initials-b_b/
As to Serge, Jason Ankeny tells us:
Serge Gainsbourg was the dirty old man of popular music; a French singer/songwriter and provocateur notorious for his voracious appetite for alcohol, cigarettes, and women, his scandalous, taboo-shattering output made him a legend in Europe but only a cult figure in America, where his lone hit “Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus” [reached] number 69. Born Lucien Ginzberg in Paris [in] 1928, his parents were Russian Jews who fled to France following the events of the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. After studying art and teaching, he turned to painting before working as a bar pianist on the local cabaret circuit. . . . [S]elf-conscious about his rather homely appearance, Gainsbourg initially wanted only to carve out a niche as a composer and producer, not as a performer. [H]e made his recording debut in 1958 . . . [but] his jazz-inflected solo work performed poorly on the charts, although compositions for vocalists ranging from Petula Clark to Juliette Greco to Dionne Warwick proved much more successful. In the late ’60s, he befriended the actress Brigitte Bardot, and later became her lover; with Bardot as his muse, Gainsbourg’s lushly arranged music suddenly became erotic and delirious, and together, they performed a series of duets — including “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Harley Davidson,” and “Comic Strip” — celebrating pop culture icons. Gainsbourg’s affair with Bardot was brief, but its effects were irrevocable: after he became involved with constant companion Jane Birkin, they recorded the 1969 duet “Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus,” a song he originally penned for Bardot complete with steamy lyrics and explicit heavy breathing. Although banned in many corners of the globe, it reached the top of the charts throughout Europe, and grew in stature to become an underground classic . . . . Gainsbourg returned in 1971 with Histoire de Melody Nelson, a dark, complex song cycle which signalled his increasing alienation from modern culture: drugs, disease, suicide and misanthropy became thematic fixtures of his work, which grew more esoteric, inflammatory, and outrageous with each passing release. Although Gainsbourg never again reached the commercial success of his late-’60s peak, he remained an imposing and controversial figure throughout Europe, where he was both vilified and celebrated for his shocking behavior . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/serge-gainsbourg-mn0000174822#biography
DoubleZ adds:
Gainsbourg . . . has an absolutely hallucinating discography[ and] he is endowed with a phenomenal charisma and charm . . . . The cabbage-headed man also had darker sides, he was a “Don Juan” but also a perfect a**hole when he wanted to be, he was also a phenomenon, polemic, alcohol, drugs, sex and rock n’ roll. . . . Between genius and weirdness, Gainsbourg was a cursed poet. He was deeply affected by the “ugly man” syndrome, which drove him to make himself heard through provocation and shock value. . . . The Second World War would complicate things for his family and himself. They were forbidden to do many things, had to wear the yellow star, lost their French nationality and eventually had to desert Paris to escape the Gestapo raids. After the war, his family returned to Paris and Gainsbourg went to art school. . . . While he did not manage to break into painting, which had become his dream, Gainsbourg fell in love with music. He began to perform as a musician in cabarets and bars, then wrote his first songs to become a songwriter. At the end of the 50s . . . . [e]veryone began to sense Gainsbourg’s talent and pushed him to the forefront. In 1958, he released his first single “Le Poinçonneur des Lilas” on Philips. . . . In 1960 [he] achieved his first real and consistent commercial success with “L’Eau A La Bouche”. However, nothing went as planned, the Yé Yé era arrived and he was unable to make a place for himself, his physique and personality did not fit in with the young and fresh image of this wave. He almost fell into anonymity, despite the fact that he was still releasing songs/albums of very good quality, but fortunately his talent as a songwriter was to bring him back into the limelight in the middle of the 60s when he wrote for Françoise Hardy [see #459, 476-77, 515], France Gall [see #36, 1,361] and Juliette Gréco. He even won the Eurovision prize with “Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son”. . . . In late 1967, Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot . . . began a relationship, although the latter was married.
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/doublez/album/9721-initials-bb/
Here is some utterly mesmerizing and fascinating footage of Gainsbourg working on “Initials B.B.” in a London studio with the arranger, band and orchestra members, and putting down some vocals: https://www.facebook.com/Delicieusemusique/videos/serge-gainsbourg-initials-bb-rare-london-chapell-studio-footages/571175943536479
Say what you will about “Initials B.B.”, but what other song of the era has inspired two metal bands to take it up — witness the French black metal band Seth’s ferocious cover and that of the Swedish symphonic metal band Therion.
Season of Mist tells us about Seth’s ’24 cover:
French black metal vanguard SETH unveil a radical reinterpretation of Serge Gainsbourg’s infamous 1968 ode to Brigitte Bardot with their new music video for “Initials B.B.”. Originally steeped in orchestral melancholy and sensual decadence, this new incarnation emerges as a ceremonial descent through the fractured heart of post-Christian France—a realm haunted by divine absence, erotic delirium, and the relics of fallen gods. Framed as a bonus piece to the revolutionary liturgy of La France des Maudits, this rendition emerges as a new chapter in the band’s ongoing rite of desecration. Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the album’s release, timed with Bastille Day, the video deepens the mythos of a France scorched by desire and spiritual collapse. As the republic recalls its hour of uprising, SETH conjures another insurrection: one of shadows and silhouettes, where sound and image bleed together in an unholy communion. A well-balanced and finely produced record that honours the legacy of French black metal. A well-balanced and finely produced record that honours the legacy of French black metal. Within the album’s iconoclastic cosmology, the figure of Bardot is reimagined as a mythic seductress; a corrupted Marianne veiled in red, muse to apostasy and forbidden glamour. Where Gainsbourg once sighed, SETH now roars, threading her memory into the scarlet lineage of the album’s insurgent saints, diabolical poets, and cast-out lovers.
Here is Seth:
And here is a link to the striking video of Therion’s ’12 cover (warning: contains nudity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scdffAiRllY. The quasi-Nazi imagery is bracing and disturbing, without even considering that Gainsbourg and his family had to flee Nazi-occupied Paris. However, if Gainsbourg had lived long enough to see the video, I have a sneaking suspicion he would have approved.
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