Europe 1 / Photo credit: GAIZKA IROZ / AFP 14:51 pm, July 16, 2023

This Sunday, Jane Birkin, actress and singer, died at the age of 76. She was found dead Sunday at her home in Paris. Jane Birkin sang of Serge Gainsbourg's little wonders and also left beautiful texts from her pen. Selection of five titles from his river repertoire.

Actress and singer Jane Birkin died on Sunday, July 16 at the age of 76. She was found dead Sunday at her home in Paris. Jane Birkin was particularly known for her relationship and her songs with Serge Gainsbourg, including Je t'aime... Neither do I. She was also the mother of actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Her health had been worrying for several months and she had been forced to cancel several concerts. The actress had suffered a stroke in 2021 and had then multiplied hospital stays. "Intensive care, I know by heart," she said in January 2022 in the columns of Le Parisien. Jane Birkin, who died at the age of 76, sang of Serge Gainsbourg's little wonders and also left beautiful texts from her pen. Selection of five titles from his river repertoire.

"I love you, me neither", the scandal

It is a worldwide success with the smell of scandal: the Vatican condemned this song punctuated by amorous rasps. Released in 1969, a decidedly erotic year, it is a piece with an incredible destiny. It was first written by Serge Gainsbourg for Brigitte Bardot, with whom he had a dazzling and clandestine affair. As the star of the 7th art was then married to the German playboy Gunther Sachs, the sexually explicit title, recorded in 1967, was put to sleep. He will not emerge from limbo until 1986 with the voice of "BB", long after this famous version of 1969 with Jane Birkin, became companion of the man with the head of cabbage.

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"Di doo dah", the signature

"Di doo dah", title track of an eponymous album released in 1973, imposes the vocal signature of Jane Birkin with a chorus-ritornelle that remains permanently in memory. It is modeled by Serge Gainsbourg, who uses the complexes of the young Jane, when she was in boarding school in England. "The other girls have beautiful nipples/And I stay as flat as a boy/That it's stupid," sings Jane Birkin. Yet she has taken her revenge on the ungrateful adolescence, since her filiform figure is on the front page of magazines and she is labeled a sex symbol. More than 20 years later, in 1996, Jane Birkin will offer another song catch-hearts with "La gadoue", originally written by Serge Gainsbourg for Petula Clark (1966).

"Ex-fan of the sixties", the name

In his "Dictionnaire amoureux de la chanson française", the French journalist Bertrand Dicale links "the affection of the French for Jane Birkin" to the fact that "the beautiful conquered foreigner is forever installed in this land of exile which is ours".

Another song will also have made for its final adoption in France, it is "Ex-fan of the sixties", still signed Serge Gainsbourg and which gives its name to an album in 1978. The title of this hit song will even become by extension the nickname of the performer. Jane Birkin said she first ran into the rhythm imposed by the parade of names of artists who died prematurely. "Missing Brian Jones/Jim Morrison/Eddy Cochran/Buddy Holly/Ditto Jimi Hendrix/Otis Redding/Janis Joplin/T.Rex, Elvis".

"Les dessous chics", the favorite

"It's the most beautiful song about separation we can have," she told AFP. Every time I sing +It's the modesty of feelings/Outrageously made up/Blood Red+, I think of him. He's probably my favorite, because everything in it is really him."

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The wildly elegant track was conceived in 1983 for the hit album "Baby alone in Babylone", written by Serge Gainsbourg after they have been separated for three years.

"There's a great modesty in all these songs he's written about separation. Serge never stopped writing to me until the end," she said. We could also mention "Fleeing happiness for fear that he will save himself", in the same vein and on the same album.

"Those thick walls", catharsis

This time, it is Jane Birkin who writes herself her splendid album "Oh! Sorry you were sleeping..." (2020), produced by Etienne Daho. In this opus that could not be more intimate, she addresses, among other things, the death of her daughter Kate in "Cigarettes" ("My daughter screwed up in the air") and touching "These thick walls", evocation of her grave ("Me outside, you below, silent cry, mute").