Serge Gainsbourg & his Lollipop:

Entendre, please! And make it a double!

That waggish trickster Serge Gainsbourg: When he wrote Les Succettes (“Lollipops”) for the 18 year old France Gall in 1966, the girlish gal probably hadn’t much experience with succettes of the skin variety. She bought the lollipop concept, entendre-free.

I’m guessing her parents weren’t paying much attention to what she was doing either. Gall is said to have been very upset when she learned the truth about what those models meant by pulling the long succettes in and out of their mouths as well as the forest of dancing phalli she was made to cavort with. Oh. And singing verses like:

When the barley sugar 
Flavored with anise 
Sinks in Annie’s throat, 
She is in heaven.

Here’s the story according to website Dangerous Minds:

It wasn’t until she was on tour in Tokyo that someone let the cat out of the bag [about the entendre of the song]. Gall was infuriated and greatly embarrassed by what she’d unwittingly taken part in. She felt betrayed by the adults around her and mocked like a naive fool. She refused to leave her home for weeks afterwards and ultimately stopped singing Gainsbourg’s songs that had made her so famous. For years afterwards her career suffered from her association with this scandal, even if “Les Sucettes” had been a big hit.



Despite his legendary love affair with Jane Birkin, Gainsbourg made something of a career out of being a cad. In 1986 he would encounter a 22 year old Whitney Houston and just couldn’t help himself. Gainsbourg, a three pack-a-day smoker, was 58 at the time. He’d be dead four years later.