I’d known this song since forever but I really, properly started to love it early 2000s in Tokyo as a comedown tune: 6am or so, back to a mate’s after being out to places like Blue, Yellow or Air. Bardot’s first ‘Bonnie’ coming in as the sexiest thing you’ve ever heard in your life.
There was a window from maybe the mid-90s for 20 years or so when Gainsbourg got his due in the English-speaking world. Now I think he’s out of fashion again as his attitudes don’t fit the new puritan world. Not that the French are having any of that, they still adore him. Fair old life he had, but also what music, too. The Melody Nelson album, Jonny-Jane, Requiem Pour un Con and lots more.
For the Bonnie lines in this song, Gainsbourg translated parts of Bonnie Parker’s diaries in which she writes of her love for Clyde Barrow. Everything about this is perfection.
Here’s a pretty good, straight English-language cover by Mick Harvey out of the Birthday Party and BP-associate Anita Lane for those like me whose French isn't good enough to fully appreciate Serge's lyrics.
The original has been sampled quite a lot, sometimes really well: MC Solaar, Renegade Soundwave, United Future Organization