Histoire de Melody Nelson

My French isn’t strong enough to know if this is a song about a Rolls Royce running over a 13 year old and then having sex with her (as one listener suggested) or if it is about a French fella having a glass of Burgundy sitting in front of a fire. Either way the music was good

Beautiful album, somewhat haunting at times too. Love the orchestra that plays throughout the album and the really funky guitar playing on En Melody. Gainsbourgs voice is beautiful too.

Take away the vocals and this would be a far better album. Some interesting instrumentals but can’t get the singing.

I listened to this on my work computer am I going to get fired?
But also, "Melody" is incredible in its squirminess; song that goes just about everywhere and soars and evolves dramatically. And I never realised just how directly David Holmes ripped it off for "Don't Die Just Yet."

OH COME ON SERGE GAINSBOURG! Histoire De Melody Nelson would have been a good album with good background music which consisted of interesting guitar playing, some well done basslines and interesting orchestral elements but then you just had to ruin it by making the lyrical material about this 40 year old man falling in love and trying to seduce a 14-15 year old girl. Legit, everything about this subject matter is absolutely disgusting and just sours my taste of this album. The only thing saving this album from a full blown 1 star review is the fact that the lyrics are in French meaning i can't understand them. If the lyrics were in a language i could understand(English and some Spanish), then regardless of how good the music sounds, it would get a 1 but because they are not, this album is getting a 1.5
Best Song: En Melody
Worst Song: L'Hotel particulier

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Musically it sounds great, apart from Serge eating the mic. His voice does occasionally border on ASMR territory, but most of the time it just sounds creepy. Maybe that is the intent? I've never read or watched Lolita, but as far as I'm aware it is meant to be a critique of male obsession, albeit a very extreme and controversial one. I haven't had a look at the translated lyrics for this album, but given the various controversies on Serge Gainsborough's wiki (esp. Lemon Incest), and his taste for younger women, I'm veering towards this being more of a creepy album than a provocative critical piece.

weird and dull

Il y a des disques qui sont bons, il y a des disques qui sont importants et puis il y a des disques qui sont des putains de miracles. Des anomalies, des ovnis sonores qui atterrissent sans crier gare et qui redéfinissent les règles du jeu pour les décennies à suivre. "Histoire de Melody Nelson" est de ceux-là, c'est plus qu'un album, c'est une oeuvre d'art totale, un film pour les oreilles, un poème symphonique de 28 minutes qui vous attrape à la gorge et ne vous lâche plus.

Je vais être franc avec vous, essayer de faire preuve d'objectivité avec ce disque est une mission impossible. C'est un de mes albums de chevet depuis l'adolescence. Je l'ai écouté des centaines de fois, dans toutes les situations possibles, et à chaque fois, la magie opère. Alors, pour cette chronique, on va laisser l'analyse froide au vestiaire et parler avec les tripes.

En 1971, la France musicale, c'est encore le yé-yé qui agonise gentiment et la variété qui s'installe confortablement. Et au milieu de tout ça, Serge Gainsbourg, notre génie national, le parrain de tous les branleurs magnifiques, décide de tout dynamiter. Il part à Londres, s'entoure de la crème des musiciens de studio anglais (ceux qui jouaient avec les plus grands, de Shirley Bassey à James Bond), et ramène un son d'une modernité absolument ahurissante pour l'époque. Un son où les basses sont lourdes, profondes, presque menaçantes, la batterie est sèche, précise, implacable, les guitares sont discrètes mais venimeuses. Et par-dessus tout ça, les arrangements orchestraux de Jean-Claude Vannier, absolument somptueux - classieux comme aurait dit Gainsbourg - qui viennent draper le tout d'une mélancolie cinématographique.

Et puis il y a l'histoire, une histoire sulfureuse, évidemment. On est chez Gainsbourg, merde ! Une histoire d'amour impossible et tragique entre un homme mûr et une "petite Anglaise aux cheveux roux", Melody Nelson. Une Lolita de Nabokov qui aurait troqué sa sucette pour une bicyclette. C'est un album-concept, un vrai, qui raconte une histoire du début à la fin. De la rencontre accidentelle ("Ballade de Melody Nelson") à la fin tragique ("Cargo Culte"), chaque morceau est un chapitre.

Le génie de Gainsbourg, c'est de raconter cette histoire avec une économie de mots incroyable. Il ne chante pas, il parle. Son fameux "talk-over", ce phrasé nonchalant et sensuel, est ici à son apogée. Il pose ses mots sur la musique comme un peintre poserait des touches de couleur sur une toile. Chaque mot est pesé, chaque silence est assourdissant.

Et c'est scandaleux, bien sûr. Pour l'époque, c'était une provocation car parler de cette relation avec une quasi-mineure, avec cette sensualité à la fois frontale et poétique, il fallait oser. Et il a osé et il a pris tout le monde à rebrousse-poil. Le public, la critique... Personne n'a rien compris. L'album a été un flop commercial monumental et il faudra attendre plus d'une décennie pour qu'il soit enfin reconnu et certifié disque d'or. C'est le destin des oeuvres d'avant-garde : être trop en avance sur leur temps.

Mais aujourd'hui, quelle claque ! L'album n'a pas pris une ride, il est d'une modernité insolente. Des artistes comme Beck, Portishead, Air, toute la scène trip-hop et électro des années 90 et 2000, ont pillé ce disque jusqu'à la moelle. Cette façon de mélanger rock, funk, arrangements de cordes et spoken word, c'est lui qui l'a inventée.

"Histoire de Melody Nelson" est un album culte, un album mythique. C'est un monolithe noir au milieu de la discographie française, un chef-d'oeuvre absolu dans le parcours quasi-parfait d'un des plus grands artistes du XXe siècle. C'est un disque qui se vit plus qu'il ne s'écoute, c'est une expérience.

Alors oui, ma note est de 5/5. Et elle est tout sauf objective. C'est une note de fan, une déclaration d'amour à un artiste et à une oeuvre qui m'ont façonné. Si vous ne l'avez jamais écouté, arrêtez tout ce que vous êtes en train de faire, mettez un casque sur vos oreilles, et laissez-vous emporter. C'est 28 minutes de votre vie, mais je vous promets que vous en sortirez changé. C'est le son d'un génie au sommet de son art et rien que pour ça, il mérite la note maximale. Sans discussion possible.

I didn't really enjoy this. Tough, for me, to rate something when I don't know what it's about.

the concept behind this album is a little strange ngl. the instrumentation is fantastic, but i don’t care for the frenchman whispering in my ear

The French chatter gets on my nerves. Serge's whispered chanting and Jane's breathy melodies make me more aggressive than the hip hop I don't appreciate.
1/5

I don't get it. I suppose it being in French has something to do with it, but it just comes off as sleazy.

Well that was certainly something.

Not a fan of the concept itself, but this is the type of album I would expect to find on this list. I'm not gonna listen to this regularly, but going through it once was an interesting experience. The backing music is catchy, even if the vocals don't do much for me.

So... a concept album about kid-diddling, performed by a(n alleged) kid-diddler? Fucking great! Trying really hard to find a positive in this pile of shit. Once in a while the beats and guitar work align into something interesting, but it's not often and Beck ripped off all of them. The ever-present whisper talking vocals (produced so high in the mix sometimes it's hard to even hear the music over it) are AWFUL. Seriously, go watch The Simpsons episode "Life On the Fast Lane". You will never again be able to unhear Marge's bowling instructor Jacques on every track. Fuck this album in its entirety! Gotta go listen to something akin to an audio shower now.

This album exceeded all my expectations. What a concept album! An album with a theme that could almost no longer be made these days; social media would explode. Now it was also quite provocative in 1971, but 2 years earlier the big hit "je 't aime, .....moi non plus" was released by this Serge Gainsbourg and his muse and partner Jane Birkin, which already caused quite a stir. Now Serge liked provocations and the more reactions that generated, the better. Much later he managed to shock half of France with 'Lemon Incest' sung by him and his very young daughter Charlotte, accompanied by a clip that again caused quite a stir.

In any case, the story of 'Histoire de Melody Nelson' is not complicated. A 40-year-old man drives a Rolls Royce in a somewhat seedy neighborhood and muses about his life. Not paying attention, he runs over a young, doll-like girl on her bicycle. He seduces her and after a short passionate relationship (a cooing Jane Birkin in L'Hotel Particulaire) Melody leaves back for England, but her plane crashes.

The record is first and foremost an ode to Serge's muse and long term partner Jane Birkin: Melody is a conjugation of Jane Birkin's middle name and Nelson was a national war hero and also a hero of Jane's father. You will of course also recognize 'Lolita' by Nabakov, a book that immediately appealed to Serge Gainsbourg.

The music, especially the first song of 7.5 minutes, is particularly sultry with the languid, lazy bass, the organ and the unruly guitar. It's easy to imagine why this record was such a source of inspiration for the trip hop movement from the 90s (Tricky, Portishead et al).

Serge talks sometimes, then sings, and musically it is almost impossible to imagine what comes next. It's a complete musical spectrum of funk, soul, jazz rock, but also strings and a whole choir. The music was not written by Serge, but by his friend Jean Claude Vannier who might've made his best work of a lifetime.

Superb

I'll start positive by stating that the strings and instrumentals are gorgeous here, with a lot of the big moments left up to them rather than Serge Gainsbourg, and it pays off fantastically. I also find the short runtime to be a Godsend when so many albums feel so long now, even the forty minute ones seem to run me dry, so something more stomach-able such as this leads me feeling far less exhausted than an album that sounds like this would leave me were it hitting an hour.

That all being said, I really can't stand that whisper singing Gainsbourg does, as whilst I can see the inspiration for bands like Pulp, the way the microphone seems to peak really irritates my ears, like an annoying, overtly French ASMR. Maybe the songs are really nuanced, but being a stupid American, I couldn't understand them if I tried. Here, let's look up what this album is about!

...oh. Gross. Still, great strings, perhaps another topic with actual singing and this would be an awesome album. Instead, it is most definitely French, and I can fill my French needs elsewhere.

Damn the French have disappointed me. Not bad if I didn't know what it was about. Well even then, I maybe would have given a polite 2, but "En Melody" had to fucking ruin that.

Yeah whoa I can't believe I'm giving a EUROVISION WINNER and the songwriter of "Poupee de cire, poupee de son" such a low rating but this is rough.

Musically this is just astonishing, like nothing else really. You can query the narrative, but it's clearly a character - like the musical equivalent of Lolita

Such a shame because the music is actually pretty good but the vocals and concept are weird and creepy as fuck.

This was certainly interesting. My favorite song was Cargo culte. Wish I spoke French so I could know what he’s saying.