How Jane Birkin broke the UK Singles Chart
Overt eroticism was still largely taboo by the end of the 1960s. While sexual liberation had become a cause célèbre for an ever-increasing amount of younger people, the cloistered heads of movie studios, record labels, and cultural institutions would either block sexually explicit material or exploit them for cheap exposure. Serge Gainsbourg knew the limitations of French popular culture better than most, and with the help of Jane Birkin, he crossed borders to push boundaries with her by challenging morality through music.
After having met while filming 1968’s Slogan, Gainsbourg convinced Birkin to sing a duet that he had written a year prior, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’. The song was originally written for actor Bridget Bardot, but after Bardot’s husband found out about the recording (and thus the affair between Bardot and Gainsbourg), the single was recalled before it ever hit record stores. Still, Gainsbourg was intent on releasing the song, opting to replace Bardot with Birkin.
A slow-moving organ-heavy psychedelic ballad not dissimilar to Parcol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ featured whispered pleas, gentle coos, and stark references to sex that were considered obscene in 1969. The song’s sexually-charged atmosphere and blunt analysis of physical intimacy, not all of it positive, made ‘Je t’aime’ an instant source of fascination, especially when Birkin concludes the track with heavy breathing reminiscent of an orgasm.
‘Je t’aime’ was immediately banned by a number of radio stations and record stores when it was released in France in early 1969. Fontana Records had attempted to distribute the single throughout Europe, but the import copies were scarce thanks to the bans. ‘Je t’aime’ reached its peak of notoriety when the Vatican officially denounced it in L’Osservatore Romano. Birkin admitted that she went a bit too far during the recording of the song, but had no regrets.
“I got a bit carried away with the heavy breathing – so much so, in fact, that I was told to calm down, which meant that at one point I stopped breathing altogether,” Birking told The Telegraph in 2009. “If you listen to the record now, you can still hear that little gap. It was banned immediately in Italy by the Pope, but Serge just called him ‘our greatest PR man.'”
The controversy that surrounded ‘Je t’aime’ made it a highly coveted single. Fontana couldn’t keep up with the demand, especially since few record stores could actually sell the single. Still, according to a contemporary account by Record World magazine, ‘Je t’aime’ had sold three million copies across Europe by October of 1969. The song had climbed all the way to number two on the UK Singles Chart before Fontana was forced to withdraw copies from all record stores after the song was declared obscene.
Undaunted, Gainsbourg arranged for a different record company, Major Minor Records, to distribute copies of the song. The bans couldn’t keep up with the demand for the song, and on October 4th, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ hit number one in the UK. It was the first banned record to circumvent its restrictions to reach the top of the charts. There were actually three versions of ‘Je t’aime’ on the charts that week: the Major Minor single was at number one, the banned Fontana single was at number 33, and an English-language version by Nice Sounds featuring keyboardist Tim Mycroft titled ‘Love At First Sight’ was at number 22.
Since the Fontana and Major Minor releases were the same identical recording, ‘Je t’aime’ became the first single to chart twice within the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. Birkin and Gainsbourg had broken the UK chart system, circumvented sales restrictions, challenged morals, and even battled the Pope on their way to number one. For their trouble, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ went on to sell more than eight million copies worldwide.
Check out ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ down below.
