Serge Gainsbourg

I Love Serge (Mercury France)
by Michael McCarthy

To coincide with the recent re-release of the late Serge Gainsbourg‘s catalog, Mercury France gave 14 of his best tracks to top electronica gurus to recreate and the result is I Love Serge. If you had to describe his music with one or two words and weren’t allowed to call it “French pop,” you might call it lounge music, and the wonderful thing about this collection is that the lounge music flavor is as present as Serge’s vocals in most of the tracks. While most would be better served on a Back To Mine chill-out collection than on the floor of your local discotheque, that’s not to call them background music. Krikor & W.A.R.R.I.O.’s mix of “Love on the Beat,” for example, demands your full attention when a woman starts moaning – or is she shouting? – almost violently, while it sounds like an ape is having a fit in Faze Action’s mix of “Là-bas c’est naturel.” The always-scruffy, always-smoking Serge was never so mischievous.