Album artwork courtesy of the label
On the turntable
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La Vie FrançaiseNo. 5 of the Continental 100
Histoire de Melody Nelson
Serge Gainsbourg · 1971
Twenty-eight minutes, seven songs, and roughly fifty years of influence.
Why it matters
A concept record about a Rolls-Royce, a girl and a plane crash, murmured rather than sung over the best bass playing in French popular music. It is short, strange and entirely without fat. Half of modern French production still sounds like an attempt to get back inside it.
The Continental setting
Paris after midnight, or anywhere you can convincingly pretend is Paris after midnight.
Start here
- 01Melody
- 02Ballade de Melody Nelson
- 03Cargo Culte
The most influential French record of the last half-century.
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