Thursday, June 24, 2010

Isabelle Aubret


I don't know too much about Isabelle Aubret... Well, I mean, I can google as well as the next guy... I guess I mean that I don't CARE too much about Isabelle Aubret. I bought an LP by her because one of the songs had a Serge Gainsbourg writing credit.

Besides being a singer/songwriter of his own material, Serge had a profitable sideline in the 60's writing material for female singers, some of the Ye Ye persuasion, like young France Gall who won the Eurovision song contest singing Serge's "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" in 1965. She also sung Serge's dirty ditty, Les Sucettes, an ode to licking a, um, lollipop. If you're not good at reading between the lines, this blatantly pornographic video clip puts the b in subtle...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-iysdFu_TQ

Why the two losers who have uploaded this to youtube don't want the clip to be embedded is beyond me. Your stolen Youtube video is that precious? really? But, anyways, props to dirty, liberated, French culture for showing a bunch of random girls giving popsicles head a good 20 years before anyone in the USA even thought of such a thing... really!

Besides, France Gall, Serge also wrote for Francois Hardy:



Despite not sucking on any popsicles, F. Hardy is about 10,000 times sexier than France Gall in this video...

Funnily enuff, the supposedly sexiest of Gainsbourg's chansonniere's, Bridget Bardot, looks remarkably asexual in the video for "Contact", another Gainsbourg composition:

Sort of a Grace Jones vibe, no?

Anyways, I am no Serge Gainsbourg expert, but I do know the man was a workaholic in the 60's and he churned out songs like crazy, many of which were cut by female singers. With that in mind, I present "Pour Aimer Il Faut Entre Trois" by Isabelle Aubret. Even in these sort of workmanlike efforts you can hear what made Serge different back then. He has a feel for elegant faux latin jazz. This song in particular reminds me a little of some of the soundtrack stuff Lalo Schifren was doing in the mid 60's, but with a nice restrained vocal by Isabelle...

Isabelle Aubret- Pour Aimer Il Faut Entre Trois