TUNESMITH TUESDAY - "Je t'aime; moi non plus" - by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg

The Most Scandalous Song of 1969

"Je t'aime… moi non plus" (French for "I love you… me neither") was written by Serge Gainsbourg in 1967, and originally recorded with French actress Brigitte Bardot, Gainsbourg's girlfriend at the time. The following year, Gainsbourg and English actress Jane Birkin began a relationship when they met on the set of the film Slogan. After filming, he asked her to record the song with him.

According to Wikipedia,

Birkin said she "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. If you listen to the record now, you can still hear that little gap." There was media speculation, as with the Bardot version, that they had recorded live sex, to which Gainsbourg told Birkin, "Thank goodness it wasn't, otherwise I hope it would have been a long-playing record." It was released in February 1969. The single had a plain cover, with the words "Interdit aux moins de 21 ans" (forbidden to those under 21).

The song was a commercial success throughout Europe. By 1986, it had sold four million copies. After reaching the Number two spot in the UK, it was withdrawn for sale. Gainsbourg arranged a deal with Major Minor Records and on re-release it reached number one, the first banned number one single in the UK and the first single in a foreign language to top the charts. It stayed on the UK chart for 31 weeks. It even made the Top 100 in the United States, reaching number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart . Mercury Records, the US distributor, faced criticism that the song was "obscene" and there was limited airplay, limiting US sales to around 150,000.