Histoire de Melody Nelson

Класний і дуже стильний альбом. Тверда четвірка. Взагалі дискографія Гензбурга доволі цікава, а ще він вплинув на створення мого улюбленого альбому АМ tranquility based hotel and casino.

Gross.
Among the more cancelable records on this list. If you don’t speak French (and even if you do… maybe especially if you do) I’m not sure this should be required listening.

I suppose this would have been better as a concept album when I could understand the lyrics to get the concept. Reading about the story makes the guy a pedophile/groomer going after a teenager. Not really a fan of the music or the concept. 2/5

Ik was wat huiverig voor dit album. Mij was verteld dat Serge de man achter Je t'aime moi non plus is. Nou ben ik niet zo gevoelig voor zogenaamd ontwrichtende muziek. Maar muziek krijgt van mij hiervoor ook zeker geen waardering.

Toch moet ik bekennen dat in dit geval het zoeken naar anti-kudo's samengaat met muzikale aandacht. Dat ik afknap op het Franse gewauwel van meneer zal mensen die mij kennen niet zo verbazen. Maar muzikaal klinkt het verrassend prettig en vrij origineel. Ik moet zeggen: toch weer een aanvulling aan het einde van de lijst.

Some cool loungey sleazy psychedelic stuff going on musically, but more than ruined by being a concept album about hitting a child with your car then fucking her. Guys just had these fantasies out loud in the 70s huh? Great representative of France here, the laid back, chilled out, black turtle neck wearing pedo rapist.

Just love the irreverence of Gainsbourg. The mix of cinematic jazz stylings and loungey singer songwriter works great on this record. 4 stars

I enjoyed this, but the meat of the discussion around this album is so tied up in things I know very little about that I'm pretty sure I'm not the right person for the job here. I don't speak a lick of French, and I'm only now hearing about Serge Gainsbourg for starters. Basically, in a nutshell, Serge Gainsbourg was most famous for being a provocateur, and I guess he's kind of a French national treasure in a weird way. This album is about an affluent man hitting a child with his car and becoming sexually obsessed with her. Then I think she dies in a plane crash? I'm not sure. Anyways, the subject matter here is pretty fucked. Given this summary, I kind of listened to this with the lens one should approach Lolita with. I had the assumption that the intent of this album was to use the soft spoken affluence of the narrator to highlight the grotesque nature of his obsessions and get to a point about the manipulation of abuse. And, regardless of the artist's intent, this lens works. The funky, nocturnal, slightly ominous music also plays into this very well. But, seeing discussion about this album, I'm not completely sure that this was the intent. I've also seen a lot of arguing over Serge Gainsbourg in regards to this album. I've seen people accuse him of being a misogynistic creep. I've seen people defend him as a misunderstood l, daring figure. And frankly, I don't know enough to get to the bottom. Frankly, I do think that the interpretation of this album that works for me would be cheapened if the stuff on here was completely earnest. But despite this doubt, the sound alone here is enough to at least get a few points. It really is a cool sounding album, even if it's creepy as hell. But I really can't go above a 3 here. Its not just the above concerns that cap it though. There are songs here that I don't really like, and at 28 minutes, I think it ends up a little low impact. Basically, it's a cool experience with a couple of *big* warnings.

One of the more interesting conceptual albums about pederasty in existence. I don't speak French so I didn't know that until later.

I'll be honest, I'm not listening to this. My patience for pedophiles is at all all time low (yes that's a real sentence I never thought I'd have to say). It's 2026 and we (the USA) have a pedophile for a president. And somehow that's OK with a large portion of the population. It's not OK with me.

So I'm not going to stream this and fund this pedo. I'm going to give it 1 star and hope for something better tomorrow.

I don’t think this pedo album should be on the list.

So did we all get this album this week to mark more of the Epstein files dropping? I feel bad for liking it as much as I do because the concept behind this album is truly reprehensible, but some of the music is gorgeous.

As you’ve probably saw from the other one star reviews…yeah…this is a no for me dogg. Music was ok, but the lyrics and subject matter, that’s a different story

Perfect for the days when you just need to hear a whispery French man and a sexy-sounding lady saying her own name once in a while.
...okay so after reading the reviews, apparently the "lady" is actually an underage girl, ugh. Very disappointing.

Just because a thing is about a thing, it isn't necessarily a proponent of that thing. Come on guys, Lolita is not pro-paedophilia.

Anyway, Serge is a big pest. 5 stars.

Weird as fuck, man. Honestly, I kind of rate it. In a world where we have half stars, this is probably dead on a 3. It's still a 3 in a world without half stars, but it feels a bit unfair because it's better than most the shit I'm rating 3 stars.

Yes, interesting music and beautifully produced.

Can't help think about the sort of person that would write about falling in love with a 14 year old though.

Liked the music. Very French. Dodgy subject matter but since I couldn’t understand most of it I’m just going by the vibe which I liked.

But the most disturbing aspect of this album is that he fancied a girl from Sunderland!

1001 Albums Vol. 0012: Histoire De Melody Nelson
============================================================
Introduction: It's pretty weird to see albums like this, albums in which I haven't a single idea about what is being said. I recently got an album of the exact same type and it was an extremely underrated masterpiece. It had one of the lowest ratings I had seen on this site, however. I don't know if it's an issue with the language, not understanding the context surrounding the album, or some other issue that I'm not aware of, yet this is the most hated album that I've received so far. At the time of writing, it has an extremely low 2.75. That is pretty abysmal for a site in which most albums have somewhere between a three or four. I've heard that this album is pretty good too, so I don't know what it is with this site an non-English albums. Maybe this album does just actually suck, who knows? That said, this album was released by a French man named Serge Gainsbourg all the way back in 1971. Alright, I just read the Wikipedia snippet the site offers and can now see why this album is hated. Look, I'm not going to jump on the hate train right away. There might be some genuinely profound message behind all of the madness this album offers, yet I'm simply admitting why one could take a single look at it and hate it. I honestly feel like this album's story is not something for today's society. Anyway, I'll speak more on the album's story later. Like I was saying, this album was released in 1971 by Serge Gainsbourg. Now, the Wikipedia snippet doesn't offer much information about how the album was initially received, yet it is now regarded pretty highly by critics and casual listeners. This high regard originates from the album's ability to blend genres and its compelling yet dark narrative. It managed to blend cinematic sounds with soft rock to create something that is still regarded as pretty unique even to this day. With that said, I don't really want to say more as I want to leave the plot summary for the end of my review, so let's just go ahead and get into this album.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Track 1: Melody Score: 10/10
Track 2: Ballade de Melody Nelson Score: 8/10
Track 3: Valse de Melody Score: 7/10
Track 4: Ah Melody Score: 8/10
Track 5: L'hôtel particulier Score: 9/10
Track 6: En Melody Score: 7/10
Track 7: Cargo culte Score: 9/10
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion: This is an extremely weird album. I would go so far as to call it one of the weirdest things I have ever heard. It's one of the shortest albums I've ever listened to, yet it manages to have a profound impact on me within that short amount of time. So, what makes this album so weird? Well, this is a concept album about a fully-grown man who falls in a girl named Melody Nelson who I believe is fourteen years old. He accidently crashes his car into her while she's riding her bike down the road. The two then meet and fall in love with each other. The two then desire to have sex with each other. They do. Melody decides to ride to Sunderland via plane; however, the plane crashes and Melody dies. The fully-grown man then reminisces about Melody and whether she might still be alive or not. This entire story is told in the span of twenty-eight minutes. Like I said in the intro, today's culture might find this entire album to be absolutely disgusting and made for nothing more than shock value, yet there is so much more to it than that. I will admit, there were points in the album that made me genuinely feel uncomfortable. The track about the man and Melody meeting at the hotel to have sex made me especially uncomfortable, yet that's honestly kind of a good thing in this album's scenario. Anyway, shock value was not a key factor in the making of this album. It's definitely present, yet that wasn't the motivation behind this work. I would describe Gainsbourg's motivation behind this album as more of want to create a questionable of morality than to make a shocking piece of music. This album's subject matter is absolutely wrong, yet that is exactly what Gainsbourg wanted you to feel. I feel as if Gainsbourg wanted you to feel uncomfortable while listening to this tale of two lovers. The contrast between the genuinely well-written cinematic and espionage-like music that the listener should genuinely enjoy with the subject matter of the album should invoke so many feelings and questions in the listener. I mean, it feels weird to be enjoying such a perverted tale so much, yet the genius of this album simply makes it impossible not to enjoy. Now, because of this album's subject matter, there are plenty of moments throughout that I would call "tense" as well. The song I described above in which Melody and her lover go to a hotel to have sex is an especially good example of the tension this album provides the listener. More then half of the song is just detailed imagery of what the man sees while he makes his way up to the room he and Melody rented out. This sense of tension is something that I've rarely ever felt before while listening to music. It's great. It's only something that you could find in a tale that is so taboo, dark, and illegal. It's such a unique musical experience that it almost feels as if I'm listening to a movie in audio form. That's not to say the plot would be good if transferred over to a movie, I'm simply making a comparison. Now, with that all said, I'll briefly bring up both the vocals and the music. The music itself is pretty good. Like I said, it has an oddly cinematic and dark feel to it. There are definitely moments present that I would describe as having that typical "dark groove" that one would automatically envision when thinking of a smooth criminal. There's a nice blend of many genres across the album that all feel cinematic and contribute to whatever is going on in the story well. That aside, I can understand why people may not like Gainsbourg's vocals. They have a very creepy tone to them and every line being delivered in a whisper only adds to this. That being said, this delivery of lines and creepiness in the voice only adds to the overall theme of this album. It simply adds more tension to an already tense concept. His delivery is great in my opinion. In fact, I have a similar opinion about this entire album. It does what it sets out to do extremely well and feels extremely unique even to this day. As far as I'm concerned, this is a great album. Change my mind.
============================================================
Histoire De Melody Nelson Score: 9/10
Song Average: 8.3/10

Geschmacklose Verharmlosung von pädophlilen Fantasien. Es wird einem schlecht beim zuhören.

I heard this was Jeffery Epstein’s favorite album.