Serge Gainsbourg wrote it first for Brigitte Bardot, going as far as to record a version that he later deemed “too…hot,” before shifting allegiances in the studio and in bed to his young English co-star. The song that made Birkin a worldwide sensation - and whose notorious moans of pleasure continue to echo half a century later - almost wasn’t her song at all. Their artistic relationship outlasted their love, and Birkin, who sang in a limber soprano up until her death at age 76, stayed true to the dark, sexy style she’d originated in those early years. “He wanted me to be a star,” she said of why her name was first in the title. Soon Birkin was his full-time focus, and he helped her become a hit-making French chanteuse, releasing the overtly sexual single “Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus” and their debut album together, Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg, in 1969. “I had about two hours to learn it.” She nevertheless got both the role and Gainsbourg, who was seeing the married Brigitte Bardot at the time. “I couldn’t speak French,” she’d later recall in Sylvie Simmons’ book Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes. In 1968, Jane Birkin was a 21-year-old English actress looking for her next gig when she auditioned for Slogan, a film that featured middle-aged singer-songwriter and infamous lothario Serge Gainsbourg opposite her.
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