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.

Nadine Expert May Not Actually Be One

Why is it the French insist on adding cream to everything?

With Nadine, that’d be whipped: In this video of I Wanna Be a Rolling Stone from 1978, French pop singer Nadine Expert shows herself – or was handled – to be quite the provocateur, if only not musically. Not much to be found on her online that wasn’t written in Russian or French so I’ve no idea of her backstory; maybe she doesn’t need one. The one upfront seems to be the one that mattered most. According to a Facebook page, she released three singles, an album, and appeared on French television. She was 21 when the video was shot.

Around the same time as this video, a friend would drag me to see the very popular stage show Beatlemania. At the time I saw it, they’d a McCartney look alike on bass who’d learned to play left-handed. None of that changed the fact that it sounded like a bar band in costumes standing before screens of contemporary newsreels. My friend didn’t seem to mind: But then, he was from Las Vegas. I just kept thinking, Forget this. I should go give those records another listen. I’d be way more absorbed by Ms Expert’s performance here.

You can’t help but like her spunk.

Good Charlotte

 I'll admit, I've long had a crush on Charlotte Gainsbourg. It may've started when I saw The Little Thief. (Isn't that the one where she hums Mozart and we first realize she's getting it on with the rake?)

(IMHO, the video above—a scene from the French film Happily Ever After—works much better with the acoustic version from Pablo Honey. You can see it for yourself here. The embedding has been disabled.)

At 40 she still holds to a preternatural lankiness in body and reediness in voice, none the worse for wear after squeezing out three kids. Though her beauty may be about half of Square-jawed Johnny's, Charlotte's less refined and slightly feral appearance works to much better effect. Her air-filled voice is like a whisperier, French-ified version of Nico (sort of). It's the kind of voice you'd love to hear coming from the next pillow. For me, it's just another layer of crush honey.

Not a lot happens in the scene above. Two people make a micro-connection while listening to the same band on headphones and share a few swollen looks. Despite her wedding-ringed finger, in her eyes we see her fall into the same collective Johnny Depp longing shared by another million less pedigreed girls. Girls who might cut themselves over the possibility of tonguing Mr. Depp's poorly-shaved visage. (What spikes my longing is the idea of a music store I wouldn't have to drive across town to get to.) The only vestiges of drama here come from the stalking camera angles up from the floor and from behind displays. All the while Thom Yorke croons. Fittingly, Creep is also a song about longing for the unattainable. I suppose a music store is a good locale for that: What lonelier big city feeling is there than seeing the empty bins of your favorite bands while everything plus remixes from, say, Miley Cyrus, is available in overabundance.

Charlotte from her new album Stage Whisper, her feral looks in full flower: