Histoire de Melody Nelson ([is.twaʁdəme.lɔ.dinɛl.sɔn] "Story of Melody Nelson") is a 1971 concept album by French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Produced by Jean-Claude Desmarty, the album was released on March 24, 1971 through Philips Records. Its narrative follows an illicit romance which develops between the middle-aged narrator and 15-year-old girl Melody Nelson.
Histoire de Melody Nelson is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished work, as well as one of the greatest French-language albums in popular music.[3]
Concept
At just under twenty-eight minutes, the short running time and the stylistic consistency and similarity throughout the album give it qualities more in line with an EP or an extended musical piece with a number of movements. Histoire de Melody Nelson's mix of freewheeling guitar, funk-style bass guitar, near-spoken word vocal delivery, and lush, deep orchestratedstring and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier,[4] who composed almost all the music in collaboration with Gainsbourg for the album, have proven to be highly influential amongst later francophone and anglophone musical performers.
The cover photograph was shot by Tony Frank. In it, Melody is portrayed by Gainsbourg's partner, Jane Birkin, wearing a red wig, and with her jeans rolled down slightly to accommodate her early stage of pregnancy.[5]
Plot
While recklessly driving his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost one day, the album's unnamed narrator is distracted by the silver statue on his car's hood and collides with a young red-haired girl on a bicycle. The two exchange information after the accident, and the girl introduces herself as Melody Nelson ("Melody"). The narrator falls instantly in love with Melody, who is revealed to be only fourteen years old ("Ballade de Melody Nelson"), but who nevertheless makes the narrator happier than he could have ever imagined ("Valse de Melody"). He plans to take her virginity, knowing she has never been in love before ("Ah ! Melody"), and they travel to a secret hotel where they have sex ("L’Hôtel particulier"). Afterwards, Melody boards a cargo plane to return home to Sunderland, but a failure in the plane's autopilot causes it to crash, killing her ("En Melody"). The narrator laments Melody's death and compares his misguided hope that she might return one day to the cargo cults of Melanesia, wondering if they caused the plane's crash and finding himself unable to think of anyone or anything else ("Cargo culte").
Release
After the release of the album, a music video was made for each song and released all together as Melody, a short musical.
On October 18, 2011, Mercury Records through Universal Music released the album with a second CD containing alternate takes of all seven tracks as well as instrumental and vocal versions of the excised track "Melody Lit Babar". A limited edition was also released that included a DVD which featured the original album remixed in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a 40-minute documentary on the making of the album which includes interviews with Jane Birkin, Jean-Claude Vannier, and others. This release also includes a full-color booklet of liner notes in both French and English.
Upon its release in 1971, Histoire de Melody Nelson received critical acclaim and praise. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 96, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on 9 reviews.[6] Jason Ankeny of AllMusic described the album as "arguably his [Gainsbourg's] most coherent and perfectly realized studio album" and stated "It's by turns fascinating and repellent, hilarious and grim, but never dull -- which, in Gainsbourg's world, would be the ultimate (and quite possibly the only) sin."[7] Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club wrote "It’s a true album—its tale of innocence lost and unearned last chances wouldn’t work as well in any other medium."[8] Tom Ewing of Pitchfork stated, "The bookend tracks of Melody Nelson are a trip through far more hostile territories, the black spaces of a man's interior." He also praised the "originality" of the record, describing its sound as similar to "nothing else in rock."[9] D.M. Edwards of PopMatters commented "This is genre-defying music, but anyone with an interest in hearing a blueprint for trip hop or a master class in the depiction of desire in pop music, should be sure to listen to this mysterious, timeless, contradictory album."[10]
The songs on Histoire de Melody Nelson have been covered and sampled by various artists of different genres. British rock band Placebo recorded a cover version of "The Ballad of Melody Nelson", which was released on a compilation of cover versions with their Sleeping with Ghosts album.[15] Portishead also covered the song in French, collaborating with Jane Birkin.[16]Mick Harvey of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds also released a total of four Gainsbourg tribute albums, two in the 1990s, Intoxicated Man (1995) and Pink Elephants (1997), and two more nearly 20 years later, Delirium Tremens (2016) and Intoxicated Women (2017). He also joined the stage with frequent collaborator PJ Harvey in 1996 for performances of two Gainsbourg songs, "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Harley Davidson".[17] Michael Stipe covered "L'hôtel particulier" under the name "L'Hotel" on a 2006 Gainsbourg tribute album, Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited.[18]Hip hop act De La Soul sampled "Ah! Melody" on their song, "Held Down" from AOI: Bionix (2001); and Portishead's remix of Massive Attack's 1995 song "Karmacoma" sampled the bassline of "Melody".[12]Mirwais, a French producer who is known for his work for Madonna, sampled "Cargo Culte" on his album Production (2000).[14]David Holmes used a sample of "Melody" on his track "Don't Die Just Yet", from his 1997 album Let's Get Killed (1997).[12] Brazilian musician Rogério Skylab covered "Ah! Melody" for his 2009 album Skygirls. Brooklyn indie rock band Ava Luna covered the album in its entirety, both live at the 2016 Northside Festival, and then on LP for Seattle record label Turntable Kitchen in 2018. [19]
On 22 and 23 October 2008, Jean-Claude Vannier performed the album live at the Cité de la Musique with guest vocalists Mathieu Amalric, Brigitte Fontaine, Brian Molko, Martina Topley-Bird, Daniel Darc, Clotilde Hesme, and Seaming To. Also performing were Herbie Flowers (bass), Claude Engel (guitar) and Pierre-Alain Dahan (drums).[20] Vannier also performed his album L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches. The Lamoureux Orchestra, the Yound Choir of Paris and a children's string quintet were also part of the show.
On 28 August 2011, Vannier participated in A Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. The artists that performed Gainsbourg's songs that evening included Beck, Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Mike Patton, Zola Jesus, Victoria Legrand (singer of indie band Beach House), Ed Droste (singer of indie band Grizzly Bear) and Serge's son Lulu Gainsbourg. The second half of the evening included a performance of the album with Vannier conducting. Each of the album's songs were performed by different combinations of the evening's artists, backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Cal State Fullerton chorale. American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt also participated in the album's performance.
