Exploring the strange recording career of Brigitte Bardot
Amid the style and cigarette smoke of 1950s Paris rose Brigitte Bardot, arguably the biggest film star that France has ever seen, which is no small feat when considering the country’s absolute adoration for the medium of film. Through roles in Contempt, La Vérité and countless others, Bardot cemented herself as one of French cinema’s leading ladies. An often overlooked aspect of Bardot’s career, however, is her experience as a recording artist.
Actors attempting to make the transition from the silver screen to the singles charts is a fairly common occurrence. From Hugh Laurie’s flirts with jazz to the painful pop career of Bruce Willis, actors have been trying to make the switch for years. Even during Bardot’s heyday, her contemporaries could often be found in the recording studio between films. Fellow Jean-Luc Godard girl Anna Karina was noted for her short-lived recording career, though the most obvious example of this comes, of course, with Jane Birkin.
Bardot was a much different brew; for a start, she had appeared on album covers long before she was featured on the grooves of the record. In one of her first film roles, as the titular character in Manina, the Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, Bardot’s image captivated audiences across France – a problematic fact given Bardot was only 17 years old at the time. Though not featuring Bardot in a musical capacity, the soundtrack album taken from the film had her on the cover and began a trend that would eventually lead to the actor starting her own recording career in 1962.
Releasing ‘Sidonie’, taken from Louis Malle’s Vie Privée, Bardot sought to establish herself as a talented vocalist in addition to an actor. Her debut LP, imaginatively entitled Brigitte, followed a year later, featuring a more current, beat-adjacent sound as opposed to the mellow nature of ‘Sidonie’. Her early material attempts to encapsulate the youthful spirit that characterised French popular culture throughout the 1960s. Meanwhile, her debut album still retains obvious cinematic influence, particularly on tracks like ‘Invitango’, which features an orchestral backing evoking a grand film score.
The film star’s recording career was as varied as her filmography, fleeting from beat music to jazz, pop and orchestral music within the blink of an eye. Throughout the 1960s, she continued to record material, the undisputed highlight of which came with 1968’s Bonnie and Clyde. A collaboration with legendary French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, the album sees Bardot at her most polished, musically. Although, granted, the bulk of the album’s appeal comes from the writing and sound of Gainsbourg, Bardot’s vocal performance feels much more natural and effortless as opposed to the somewhat forced sound of her early material.
Gainsbourg continued to collaborate with Bardot on various musical projects across the decade, even writing the seminal track ‘Je t’aime…moi non plus’ for the film star. Although Bardot stepped back from her musical efforts after the 1960s, she sporadically released singles up until the mid-1980s, years after she had retired from acting. Her musical career definitely did not eclipse her work in film, often sounding sonically confused and over-produced; her albums have since grown a cult following among the record collectors of France.
After retiring from acting and music, Bardot devoted herself to animal rights activism. In more recent years, however, the film star has been criticised for her far-right political beliefs and repeated instances of Islamophobia and discrimination against minority groups. However iconic her roles in French cinema and music were, it is likely that Bardot will be more so remembered for the damage she has done by continually inciting racial hatred in France.
