On Mar 24, 2004, at 6:37 AM, William Crump wrote:
On Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 03:08 PM, Zachary Steiner wrote:
I’m trying to find English translations of Serge Gainsbourg lyrics (particularly Histoire de Melody Nelson), though I’m not really sure that I want to know what he is saying most of the time. Does any one know of a website that would offer this? Thanks.
I know what you mean. I was browsing through Gainsbourg CDs in Amoeba once and came across one with a song called "Suck Baby Suck." I don't guess it mattered what language the lyrics were in for that one.
You can distinguish two major parts in the carreer of Serge Gainsbourg (this is an oversimplification but I am not a Gainsbourg scholar so bear with me.) In the late seventies, he began to transform into a character called Gainsbarre, a drugged-up, intoxicated, unshaven, dirty, perverted, ..., all-around creepy man. This was mostly a show that he put on, but he lived through that character for the rest of his life, being very provocative, or, more acurately, acting purposefully like a jerk, in public on many occasions. Some famous incidents include the burning of a 500 FF bill, or saying to Whitney Houston "I want to fuck you" on a prime-time variety show, and I could go on and on. This reflected also in his music and his lyrics: see "Love on the beat" for instance--remembering that "beat" means something quite different in French--or "Lemon Incest" just to name a few again. They still demonstrated his playfulness with the French language, but it was used in a much more trivial manner. Once again there is a famous example where he read a "poem" he wrote on stage which was a childish ode to his penis. Quite unsurprisingly, the Gainsbarre period is mostly garbage. To reply to the original messages, I am not sure about this "Suck Baby Suck" song, but I would assume that it belongs to the late-period trashy Gainsbourg, as opposed to "Melody Nelson" which is some of his best work, musically and lyrically, so trying to understand those lyrics seems to me very legitimate, but unfortunately a translation would lose a lot :( And sorry, I don't have any pointers handy, I am quite satisfied with the original lyrics :) Julien