"Je t'aime... moi non plus" (French for 'I love you... me neither') is a 1967 song written by Serge Gainsbourg for Brigitte Bardot.
Although this version topped the charts in Birkin's native United Kingdom, the first foreign-language song to do so, and number two in Ireland, it was banned in several countries because of its overtly sexual content.
After a disappointing date with Bardot, she "phoned and demanded as a penance" the following day[2][3] that he write, for her, "the most beautiful love song he could imagine"; that night, he wrote "Je t'aime" and "Bonnie and Clyde".
[4] They recorded an arrangement of "Je t'aime" by Michel Colombier at a Paris studio in a two-hour session in a small glass booth.
[5] However, news of the recording reached the press, and Bardot's husband, German businessman Gunter Sachs, angrily called for the single to be withdrawn.
[8] Birkin has stated that "I only sang it because I didn't want anybody else to sing it", jealous at the thought of Gainsbourg sharing intimacy in the recording studio with someone else.
[4] The single, which Philips relegated to its subsidiary Fontana,[4] had a plain cover, with the words "forbidden to those under 21" ("Interdit aux moins de 21 ans").
The lyrics are sung, spoken and whispered over baroque pop-styled organ and guitar tracks[10][13] in the key of C major,[4] with a "languid, almost over-pretty, chocolate-box melody".
What they heard was an expertly stroked organ, orgasmic groans and a soft-focus melody, the musical equivalent of a Vaseline-smeared Emmanuelle movie.
It was confirmation that life across the Channel was one of unchecked lubriciousness, and Je t'aime became as essential a part of any successful seduction as a chilled bottle of Blue Nun.
The lyrics are commonly thought to refer to the taboo of sex without love, and were delivered in a breathy, suggestive style.
The Observer Monthly Music magazine later called "Je t'aime" "the pop equivalent of an Emmanuelle movie".
France Dimanche said the "groans, sighs, and Bardot's little cries of pleasure [give] the impression you're listening to two people making love".
[5] The first time Gainsbourg played the song in public was in a Paris restaurant immediately after he and Birkin recorded their version.
[30] The first covers were instrumentals, "Love at first sight", after the original was banned;[30] the first version by a British group named Sounds Nice (featuring Tim Mycroft on keyboard) became a top 20 hit.
[31] (The group's name "sounds nice" represents the two words Paul McCartney said when he heard this instrumental cover of the song.)
Prompted by the minor success of Saint Tropez, a year later in 1978, Casablanca Records released[37][38] the Summer and Moroder duet rendition of "Je t'aime" in a 15-minute version for the film Thank God It's Friday.