Je t'aime... moi non plus

Serge Gainsbourg first wrote "Je t'aime... moi non plus" for Brigitte Bardot in late 1967. As the story goes, after a disappointing date she phoned him and, as a penance, asked for the most beautiful love song he could imagine, and he wrote it that night. They recorded it in Paris, but word reached the press, Bardot's husband Gunter Sachs demanded it be withdrawn, and Bardot begged Gainsbourg not to release it. He agreed, unhappily, complaining that the first time he wrote a love song it was taken badly. In 1968 Gainsbourg began a relationship with the English actress Jane Birkin and asked her to record it with him. Birkin later said she only sang it because she did not want anyone else to. He had her sing an octave higher than Bardot, and by her own account she got so carried away with the breathing that she was told to calm down, leaving a small audible gap on the record. Released in February 1969 in a plain sleeve marked forbidden to under-21s, it was banned from radio in Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Italy and the United Kingdom, and denounced by the Vatican newspaper. The bans only helped. In Britain it was withdrawn from sale at number two, then reissued on another label and went to number one, the first banned single and the first foreign-language single to top the UK chart. According to Birkin, Gainsbourg called the Pope their greatest PR man, and the record remains the most famous whisper in French pop.