As you’d surmise from the incredible loquacity she had the tendency to display during her interviews, Jane Birkin was an artist whose protean imagination could never be hindered. The one-woman actor, director and author died in Paris on the 16th of July 2023. She was also a committed citizen, perpetually enraged with all forms of injustice. However, she was known above all for her music, particularly in conjunction with Serge Gainsbourg, who accompanied her often in the studio and on the road. During a period stretching from the late 1960s until 1978, which saw the magnificent Ex-fan des sixties released, some people began to think of her as nothing more than the vapid muse of this cabbage headed man. She was obviously much more than that. With her natural class, humour (and her very own French!), she gradually became an icon to an adoptive French public that adored her.
The young Englishwoman first met Serge Gainsbourg in 1968, having just come to France to try her luck as an actress, on the set of Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan. For ten years or so, they became a couple that embodied cool elegance, whether it was at parties, at the Elysée-Matignon or on vinyl. They produced a handful of masterpieces, including Jane Birkin - Serge Gainsbourg in 1969 and Di Doo Dah in 1973. Slightly less popular was Lolita Go Home (1975), which saw Birkin on a pop cover of Cole Porter and singing Philippe Labro, whose lyrics ended up comparing unfavourably with Gainsbourg’s. Nevertheless, this period produced countless hits, such as ‘69 Année érotique’, ‘Jane B’, ‘Ballade de Johnny Jane’ and ‘L’Aquoiboniste’.
Despite their eventual separation, the two artists continued to work together until Serge Gainsbourg’s death in 1991. While synthesisers and 80′s rhythms crept into the duo’s creations, Gainsbourg’s lyrics will forever retain their timeless beauty. Highlights from both include ‘Fuir le bonheur de peur qu’il ne se sauve’ from Baby Alone in Babylone in 1983, ‘Une Chose entre autres’ from Lost Song in 1987, and ‘Amour des feintes’ on the 1990 album of the same name (the last they’d make together). After a tribute cover album in 1996 (Version Jane), Jane Birkin reinvented herself completely. Instead of searching for a replacement for Gainsbourg - a doomed notion - she brought together a huge family of composers, arrangers, lyricists and singers, with whom she released a number of albums that embraced this newfound heterogeneity. These include Alain Souchon, Miossec and Marc Lavoine on A la légère, Brian Ferry, Mickey 3D and Caetano Veloso on Rendez-vous in 2004, and The Divine Comedy and Kate Bush on Fictions in 2006.
On her last few albums (some of the most intimate of her career), she began writing her own lyrics (Enfants d’hiver in 2008 and Oh! Pardon tu dormais in 2020). She would return to Gainsbourg’s work on only two occasions: for the live album Arabesque in 2002, and Birkin/Gainsbourg: le symphonique in 2017. While there is clearly a pre and post-Gainsbourg divide in Jane Birkin’s musical career, she has always maintained the same guiding principles in her choices and interpretations; that sometimes improbable, but always elegant, blend of lightness and depth, fantasy and feeling
