when, at age 13, she recorded a duet with her father, the revered French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, called Lemon The song also turned up on her Serge-penned debut album, Charlotte Forever, in 1986.
Now, 20 years later, Charlotte has released a follow-up, fine actor in the interim, following in the elegantly seductive footsteps of her mother, the English siren Jane Birkin, in both French and international cinema. What, then, prompted her return to music?
felt that I wouldn't do anything in the music again," Gainsbourg flawed English.
and because I don't write lyrics. And then I just happened to meet Air.
"
Dunckel. The artful pair wrote all the plush music for 5:55 chamber pop - while Nigel Godrich, the producer for Beck and Radiohead, worked his studio wizardry. But everyone, says Gainsbourg, "became very, very stuck" when it came to the lyrics.
Enter two of Britain's smartest: Jarvis Cocker, who was Monkeys were barely out of nappies; and Neil Hannon, the Divine Comedy's suave Noel Coward-meets-Burt Bacharach type.
did for a film and he told them, 'You should do a record with her maybe three songs, but he didn't have the time to finish them and he went away again. And then I had to leave to South America for four months, so we stopped everything.
When we got back, that's when we decided to call Jarvis.
show him and to make him listen to.
lyrics were in French and so he did take the same direction, but than that.
Some he came up completely on his own, and I just loved them. And some were - I wrote a little sort of a poem and he made it into a song."
succeed where countless other singing actors have failed.
Not bad singer.
"Well, I'm not ashamed to say this," says Gainsbourg, who tends to either softly croon or barely exhale her vocals. "I don't think the work is less good because I'm honest about that.
"But it took me a very, very long time to be able to say that I was an actor. Because I didn't take any acting lessons and because I started so young, I always felt like an impostor. It's the same in music.
I don't feel that I'm a real singer. I did it my way, it's my interpretation."
Will we have to wait another 20 years for the next album?
Gainsbourg laughs.
"I don't know. I'm happy with this one just for the moment," she says.
"I wish it wasn't the last one, of course, but I can't like to go. It's very abstract."
5:55 is out on Warner Music.
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