Art Pop, Baroque Pop, Spoken Word, Psychedelic Pop, Funk
Album: Histoire de Melody Nelson (RYM: 3,80/5)
Wikipédia:
Serge Gainsbourg (French pronunciation: [sɛʁʒ ɡɛ̃zbuʁ] (listen); born Lucien Ginsburg;[a] 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, actor, author and filmmaker. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French pop, he was renowned for often provocative and scandalous releases which caused uproar in France, dividing public opinion. His artistic output ranged from his early work in jazz, chanson, and yé-yé to later efforts in rock, zouk, funk, reggae, and electronica. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorise, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.
His lyrical works incorporated wordplay, with humorous, bizarre, provocative, sexual, satirical or subversive overtones. Gainsbourg wrote over 550 songs, which have been covered more than 1,000 times by diverse artists. Since his death from a second heart attack in 1991, Gainsbourg's music has reached legendary stature in France, and he has become one of the country's best-loved public figures. He has also gained a cult following all over the world with chart success in the United Kingdom and Belgium with "Je t'aime... moi non plus" and "Bonnie and Clyde", respectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Gainsbourg
Melody Nelson:
Histoire de Melody Nelson is a 1971 concept album by French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Produced by Jean-Claude Desmarty, the album was released on March 24, 1971 through Philips Records. Its narrative follows an illicit romance which develops between the middle-aged narrator and 15-year-old girl Melody Nelson.
Histoire de Melody Nelson is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished work, as well as one of the greatest French-language albums in popular music.
Concept:
At just under twenty-eight minutes, the short running time and the stylistic consistency and similarity throughout the album give it qualities more in line with an EP or an extended musical piece with a number of movements. Histoire de Melody Nelson's mix of freewheeling guitar, funk-style bass guitar, near-spoken word vocal delivery, and lush, deep orchestrated string and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier, who composed almost the entire music in collaboration with Gainsbourg for the album, have proven to be highly influential amongst later francophone and anglophone musical performers.
The cover photograph was shot by Tony Frank. In it, Melody is portrayed by Gainsbourg's partner, Jane Birkin, wearing a red wig, and with her jeans rolled down slightly to accommodate her early stage of pregnancy.
Release:
After the release of the album, a music video was made for each song and released all together as Melody, a short musical.
On October 18, 2011, Mercury Records through Universal Music released the album with a second CD containing alternate takes of all seven tracks as well as instrumental and vocal versions of the excised track "Melody Lit Babar". A limited edition was also released that included a DVD which featured the original album remixed in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a 40-minute documentary on the making of the album which includes interviews with Jane Birkin, Jean-Claude Vannier, and others. This release also includes a full-color booklet of liner notes in both French and English.
Critical reception:
Upon its release in 1971, Histoire de Melody Nelson received critical acclaim and praise. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 96, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on 9 reviews. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic described the album as "arguably his [Gainsbourg's] most coherent and perfectly realized studio album" and stated "It's by turns fascinating and repellent, hilarious and grim, but never dull -- which, in Gainsbourg's world, would be the ultimate (and quite possibly the only) sin." Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club wrote "It’s a true album—its tale of innocence lost and unearned last chances wouldn’t work as well in any other medium."[7] Tom Ewing of Pitchfork stated, "The bookend tracks of Melody Nelson are a trip through far more hostile territories, the black spaces of a man's interior." He also praised the "originality" of the record, describing its sound as similar to "nothing else in rock." D.M. Edwards of PopMatters commented "This is genre-defying music, but anyone with an interest in hearing a blueprint for trip hop or a master class in the depiction of desire in pop music, should be sure to listen to this mysterious, timeless, contradictory album."
Legacy:
Histoire de Melody Nelson is regarded by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's magnum opus and his most influential release. While it became a pivotal album of the 1970s and was instrumental in the development of French rock music and trip hop genre, it has also influenced many musical artists outside France, including Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Beck, Tricky, Broadcast, Barry Adamson of Magazine, David Holmes, Cibo Matto, Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, Stereolab, Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Portishead, The Last Shadow Puppets and Arctic Monkeys. Portishead based its musical style on the album's mixture of orchestrations with dusty drums, while Beck utilized the album's main theme heavily on his song "Paper Tiger", on his 2002 album, Sea Change. French electronic music act Air was also influenced by the album. Faith No More and Mr. Bungle vocalist Mike Patton also expressed his appreciation for the album and Gainsbourg's music, stating that "he was immediately awe-struck by the elegance, variety and detail of Serge's 'pop' forms". "It made me think that I had a lot to learn".
The songs on Histoire de Melody Nelson were covered and sampled by various artists of different genres. British rock band Placebo recorded a cover version of "The Ballad of Melody Nelson", which was released on a compilation of cover versions with their Sleeping with Ghosts album. Portishead also covered the song in French, collaborating with Jane Birkin. Mick Harvey of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds also released a total of four Gainsbourg tribute albums, two in the 1990s, Intoxicated Man (1995) and Pink Elephants (1997), and two more nearly 20 years later, Delirium Tremens (2016) and Intoxicated Women (2017). He also joined the stage with frequent collaborator PJ Harvey in 1996 for performances of two Gainsbourg songs, "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Harley Davidson". Michael Stipe covered "L'hôtel particulier" under the name "L'Hotel" on a 2006 Gainsbourg tribute album, Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. Hip hop act De La Soul sampled "Ah! Melody" on their song, "Held Down" from AOI: Bionix (2001); and Portishead's remix of Massive Attack's 1995 song "Karmacoma" sampled the bassline of "Melody". Mirwais, a French producer who is known for his work for Madonna, sampled "Cargo Culte" on his album Production (2000). David Holmes used a sample of "Melody" on his track "Don't Die Just Yet", from his 1997 album Let's Get Killed (1997). Brazilian musician Rogério Skylab covered "Ah! Melody" for his 2009 album Skygirls.
Instrumental:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX1mIfv1yJE
Je sais moi des sorciers qui invoquent les jets
Dans la jungle de Nouvelle-Guinée
Ils scrutent le zénith convoitant les guinées
Que leur rapporterait le pillage du fret
Sur la mer de corail au passage de cet
Appareil ces créatures non dénuées
De raison ces papous attendent des nuées
L'avarie du Viscount et celle du Comet
Et comme leur totem n'a jamais pu abattre
À leurs pieds ni Boeing ni même D.C. Quatre
Ils rêvent de hijacks et d'accidents d'oiseaux
Ces naufrageurs naïfs armés de sarbacanes
Qui sacrifient ainsi au culte du cargo
En soufflant vers l'azur et les aéroplanes.
Où es-tu Melody et ton corps disloqué
Hante-t-il l'archipel que peuplent les sirènes
Ou bien accrochés au cargo dont la sirène
D'alarme s'est tue, es-tu restée
Au hasard des courants as-tu déjà touché
Ces lumineux coraux des côtes guinéennes
Où s'agitent en vain ces sorciers indigènes
Qui espèrent encore des avions brisés
N'ayant plus rien à perdre ni Dieu en qui croire,
Afin qu'ils me rendent mes amours dérisoires
Moi, comme eux, j'ai prié les cargos de la nuit
Et je garde cette espérance d'un désastre
Aérien qui me ramènerait Melody
Mineure détournée de l'attraction des astres.
Tu t'appelles comment ?
Melody
Melody comment ?
Melody Nelson
I know, myself, wizards
Invoking the jets.1
In the jungle of New Guinea,
They scrutinize the zenith,
Coveting the guineas2
Which they'd earn
from plundering the freight.
On the Coral Sea
As this aircraft passes,
These creatures,
Not devoid of reason;
These Papuans
Expect from the clouds,
A failure of the Viscount3
Or that of the Comet.4
But, as their totems
Will never be able
To make fall at their feet,
Neither Boeing5
Nor even D.C. Four;6
They dream of hijacks
Or of bird crashes.
These naive wreckers
Armed with blowguns
Who thus sacrifice
to the Cargo's Cult,7
By blowing
Towards the azure
And airplanes.
Where are you, Melody?8
And your dislocated body,
Does it haunt
The archipelago
Populated by
Mermaids?9
Or clinging to the freighter
Whose alarm siren10
Has gone silent,
By chance,
Have you stayed
On the currents?
Have you ever touched
These luminous corals
Of the Guinean coasts,
Where these native sorcerers
Toss about in vain?
Who still hope
For broken planes?
With nothing left to lose,
Nor God in whom to believe,
So that they give me back
My derisory loves;
I, like them, prayed
To the freighters of the night.
And, I keep this hope
Of an air disaster
Which would bring me back
Melody, diverted Minor11
Of the stars' attraction.12
"What's your name?"
- Melody.
"Melody, last name?"
- Melody Nelson.
1. A jet is a jet aircraft. This term of English origin was used in the French language as soon as the first aircraft of this type appeared. That's why S. Gainsbourg already used the term at the time.
2. The guinea is a gold coin and a unit of account, first Englisher than British, and minted from 1663 to 1813, then, it simply remained (until 1971) as a unit of traditional account worth 21 shillings, i.e., a pound and a shilling before decimalization. Its name is linked to the region on the coast of Guinea, where a large amount of gold from the European colonial empires came from.
3. The "Vickers Viscount" was a British medium-range turboprop aircraft marketed in 1948 by the manufacturer "Vickers-Armstrong," making it the pioneer of its kind.
4. Here again, Serge juggles with concordances since he evokes with a single word both Halley's comet (source of many archaic cults) and the "de Havilland DH.106 Comet," which was the world's first commercial jet airliner. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland at its Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, the United Kingdom, the "Comet 1" prototype first flew in 1949. It featured an aerodynamically clean design with four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines buried in the wing roots, a pressurized cabin, and large square windows. It offered a relatively quiet, comfortable passenger cabin for the era and was commercially promising at its debut in 1952.
5. The aircraft and aerospace manufacturer "Boeing" was founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt. It was first baptized "B&W." Then, shortly after, "Pacific Aero Products," and finally, "Boeing Airplane Company."
6. The Douglas DC-4 is a four-engine transport aircraft built by "The Douglas Aircraft Company" between 1942 and 1947. This aircraft was the first four-engine and the first tricycle landing gear aircraft built by "Douglas Aircraft Company."
7. cargo planes; "The cargo's cult" isn't a "Gainsbourgian" invention. It was genuinely born among the natives of Melanesia. As they were unaware of the existence and the methods of Western production; hence, they logically attributed cargo planes and the abundance and sophistication of goods brought in by these to a divine favor granted by the gods. And most of the islands constituting the Melanesian archipelago from Fiji to Papua New Guinea, except for New Caledonia, adopted it simultaneously. However, this cult only enjoyed exceptional longevity in Tanna (Vanuatu).
8. "Melody Nelson" is the main character of "Histoire de Melody Nelson" (Story of Melody Nelson), Serge Gainsbourg's cult album released in 1971. And, from which the song, "Cargo Culte," precisely, is taken. This fictional character is a teenager, but she's inspired and embodied in reality by Serge Gainsbourg's British companion at the time, Jane Birkin. So, this one lends her image (on the cover of the disc) and her voice to this character.
The story: Melody, on a bicycle, is hit by Serge Gainsbourg's "Silver Ghost", the 26-horsepower Rolls-Royce model from 1910. In a subjective and emotional bias, the author reveals in the titles "Valse de Melody" and "Ah, Melody" the feelings and doubts of the narrator, before a romance ensues in the title "L'hôtel Particulier." The album ends with the sudden mourning of the narrator. Indeed, the Boeing 707, which was to bring Melody Nelson back to Sunderland (Sunderland is a city located in the northeast of England - Sunderland means "separate land" or "divided land." This name, of course, wasn't chosen by Serge by chance, cause it suits perfectly to the idea of bodies separating by mourn evoked in the story), crashes, thus killing its passenger and causing the astonishing spiritual quest of the end of the album. After the accident, the narrator seeks indeed to find "Melody" in this "Cargo Culte" (Cargo's cult), full of fervor.
Of course, on the part of Serge Gainsbourg, the choice of the name "Melody Nelson" given to the main female character of this album, a new time, isn't insignificant. Melody Nelson is a metaphor representing the inspiration of the artist (and the muse, by extension) which can bring out strokes of genius and divine flashes but can just as well die at any time. Indeed, the luxury vehicle symbolizes success and wealth, often synonymous with a loss of motivation and a loss of creativity for the artists; the famous phobia of the blank page. "Histoire de Melody Nelson" is, therefore, a French phonetic pun; "Story; From the melody borns the sound," in other words: "From inspiration emerges sound."
9. See tag Number 10 for more explanations
10. Serge Gainsbourg wisely uses the subtleties of the French language to have fun with words by using their concordance. In French, a "siren" is a device intended for sound alarm or warning, generally characterized by a rising and falling sound ("two-tones").
We owe the invention of the siren to the Scottish physicist John Robinson at the end of the 17th century. The name "siren" ("sirène" in French) was given to this system by Charles Cagniard de Latour in 1819 in reference to the "sirènes" (mermaids) chant of Greek mythology. So, the French engineer improved the process in 1819 and invented the mechanical siren, a device now called the "Cagniard-Latour Siren," which made it possible to measure precisely the frequency of the sound emitted from the speed of the rotor. His example will be imitated by the German physicist Seebeck. In French, the word "siren" therefore designates both the mythological being half-woman, half-fish (mermaid, so), as well as the device intended to alert of danger by a powerful two-tone sound (siren).
11. Here again, a pun with "minor melody"
12. Gainsbourg plays with words once again, since he implies the fanatical attitude of young pubescent girls when they are fans of a showbiz star, and they meet this famous artist. Which Jane Birkin wasn't at all. Nor was she attracted to handsome boys. She preferred to them the charm of "broken faces," character faces with strong intelligence.
Huge thanks to Lets Chill Page on LyricsTranslate.
