Jane Birkin on making 'Je T'Aime...': 'It's about not believing in physical love. Serge was right. Bardot left him, I left him

Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg - Je T'aime,...Moi Non Plus https://youtu.be/k3Fa4lOQfbA

Fifty years ago, the sound of a woman having an orgasm was a No 1 hit. Its singer talks to Simon Hardeman about sex, Serge Gainsbourg and heavy breathing

It was the year a female orgasm made it to the top of the charts. 

In 1969, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus” became the first banned record and the first foreign-language single to reach No 1 in the UK. It still is, uniquely for such a pop hit, an erotic sound-collage of two people having sex. 

Over a sultry, repetitive tune from a cheesy organ, the 22-year-old Birkin breathes, “je t’aime, je t’aime…”, while the 40-year-old Gainsbourg louchely growls “moi non plus” (“me neither”). It builds, via increasingly heavy breathing, to Birkin’s orgasmic chorusing of “tu vas, tu vas et tu viens/ entre mes reins” (“you come, you come and you go/ between my kidneys”). Yes, the words: I’ll come to them.

The song wasn’t written for Birkin. It was composed two years earlier at the behest of Brigitte Bardot, at that point probably the world’s most famous sex symbol, and with whom the French music producer and provocateur Gainsbourg was beginning an affair. Their recording, made in a vocal booth with very steamed-up windows, caused a scandal that led to her then-husband demanding its suppression (it was eventually released in 1986).

A COVER WAS DONE BY SEX MAGICK BAND  PSYCHIC TV