Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin – Je t’aime… moi non plus

Gainsbourg, a French poet/actor/musician, originally recorded the risqué number in 1967 with Parisian actress Brigitte Bardot, who was both his musical partner and lover. When Bardot asked him to write her a love song, he came up with “Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus.” At the time, Bardot was married to German industrialist Gunter Sachs, and news of the star cozying up in the recording booth with the provocative poet was a tabloid reporter’s dream. The papers titillated readers with descriptions of the erotic tune. When the press contacted Sachs for a comment on the hot-and-heavy session, he demanded Bardot pull the plug on the project – which she did, along with her relationship with Gainsbourg.

Gainsbourg was frustrated by the furor surrounding the song. “The music is very pure. For the first time in my life I write a love song and it’s taken badly,” he lamented. Then he met Jane Birkin in 1968 on the set of the French film Slogan. The pair quickly fell for each other and Gainsbourg asked Birkin to re-record his scandalous song with him. At first, she said no. “The Bardot version was too impressive, and I was jealous,” she admitted.

Before finding Birkin, Gainsbourg approached Marianne Faithfull to re-record this with him. Although she thought Bardot was a fool for stepping down, she still refused. “I don’t know why I turned him down,” she told Mojo in 2001. “I’d say, to my shame, that I was wrapped up in the beginning of my affair with Mick Jagger and he wouldn’t have liked it. Maybe I was too young, too embarrassed – I’m sexual, but in a very different way. I’d accept now, but at the time, being the angel… actually, that would have made it even funnier. I wish I’d done it.”

The Gainsbourg/Birkin rendition befell the same rumors as the original, with claims that the pair actually made love during the recording session. Not so, says the actress. She told Mojo in 2001: “We made it very boringly in Marble Arch [in London], both of us in sort of telephone cabins. When you recorded in the old days you only had two takes, and he was very afraid I was going to go on with the heavy breathing two seconds longer and miss the very high note – an octave higher than the Bardot recording – so he was waving at me like a madman from his cabin.”

The sounds made by Birkin caused the song to be banned from radio in Spain, Sweden, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Italy, banned from radio play before 11 pm in France, and not played by many radio stations in the United States.

In Italy, this was immediately denounced by the Vatican, and the head of their record label was jailed for offending public morality. According to Birkin, Gainsbourg called the Pope “our greatest PR man.”

“Je t’aime… moi non plus” – Single by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin from the album Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg
B-side: “Jane B.” / “69 Année Érotique” (Belgium only)
Released February 1969
Songwriter Serge Gainsbourg
Producer Jack Baverstock
Charted No.57 US; No.1 UK; No.1 Austria; No.1 Norway