ABSTRACT
Serge Gainsbourg’s career began in 1958 at the right-bank nightclub, the Milord l'Arsouilie, where he was a pianist, a job which was intended to finance his never-realised ambition to become a painter. Gainsbourg in the meantime had met Jane Birkin, who was to remain his partner throughout the 1970's: in 1968 he re-recorded the title with her instead. The humour is black indeed, and typical of Gainsbourg's attack on the remaining taboos of the French middle classes. Gainsbourg was perhaps one of the first to incorporate rock music into chanson, but in terms of musical originality it was really at the level of the lowest common denominator. He is able to place quotation marks, in a manner of speaking, around musical styles, so that it is clear that he is using them in a parodic and non-serious way, for their associative value rather than in their own right.
