The Sexiest Love Song Ever written

There is a feature on Serge Gainsbourg today in Seven, the Sunday Telegraph's art's magazine. A musician, painter, photographer, writer and all round bad boy, he is still an iconic figure in France, his homeland, almost twenty years after his death. A former French president even described him as a descendent of the poets Apollinaire and Baudelaire. After all these years tributes in packets of Gitanes cigarettes and and bottles of Pastis, his favourite vices...sorry, high among his favourite vices, are still left on his grave.

In England he is known, if he is known at all, for one thing and one thing only, a song called Je t'aime, moi non plus (I love you...me neither). The unusual title comes from a quip by Salvador Dali about Picasso: "Picasso is Spanish, so am I. Picasso is a genius, so am I. Picasso is communist, neither am I".

A duet, it was originally written for Bridget Bardot, his then girlfriend, but she asked him not to release their version because she was married, and not to him! He agreed but that same year, 1969, he met and fell in love with Jane Birkin, a young English actress some twenty years his junior. Their duet went on to become a sensation when it was released as a single.

The song is structured as a dialogue between two lovers during sex. Even in these more sexually liberated times it still has a slightly sensational quality. Then it was predictably condemned by the Vatican and banned by the BBC, old Auntie, still the arbiter of British sexual morals. The relationship between Gainsbourg, not just middle aged but fairly ugly, and the young and beautiful Birkin was also an occasion for comment, with The Times saying "To see them together is to believe again in every fairy story ever written".

The two went on to have a daughter together, Charlotte. This week Birkin will open a Parisian park in memory of her former lover, with a Boulevard Gainsbourg following later this year. An exhibition of photographs featuring Gainsbourg is presently on show in Antwerp and there are plans to bring it to London next year.

I think the story of Gainsbourg and Birkin is like that of Abelard and Heloise, one of the great tributes to love, dryly Platonic in the first case, magnificently sensual in the second. I have not the least doubt that Je t'aime, moi non plus is one of the sexiest, most moving tributes to physical love ever written. It makes me tingle, it truly does.

Je t’aime je t’aime
Oh oui je t’aime
- Moi non plus
- Oh mon amour
- Comme la vague irrésolue
Je vais, je vais et je viens
Entre tes reins
Je vais et je viens
Entre tes reins
Et je me retiens

- Je t’aime je t’aime
Oh oui je t’aime
- Moi non plus
- Oh mon amour
Tu es la vague, moi l’île nue
Tu vas, tu vas et tu viens
Entre mes reins
Tu vas et tu viens
Entre mes reins
Et je te rejoins

- Je t’aime je t’aime
Oh oui je t’aime
- Moi non plus
- Oh mon amour
- L’amour physique est sans issue
Je vais je vais et je viens
Entre tes reins
Je vais et je viens
Je me retiens
- Non ! maintenant viens...