(fr3) Emmenez Moi... Chez Serge Lama (2011){re Up}

This mammoth five-disc set is a wide-ranging overview of Serge Gainsbourg's career as a songwriter, composer, and arranger. It also showcases his ability to make actual singers out of actresses and models – there are a few duets here with Brigitte Bardot, and others. Those who are encountering Gainsbourg for the first time will no doubt be intimidated by this set, it is a lovely package that moves basically in chronological order; but the three-disc De Gainsbourg à Gainsbarre set is more focused and a lot more affordable.

Serge Reggiani is a French chanson legend who first rose to fame as a singer in the 1960s after already having established himself as an actor in the cinema decades earlier. Born on May 2, 1922, in Reggio Emilia, Italy, he moved to France with his family at age eight. In the 1940s he established himself as an actor in the French cinema, most notably appearing in the Marcel Carné film Les Portes de la Nuit (1946) in addition to many others. He remained active in the cinema from the 1940s until the end of the century, acting in over 80 films total.

Serge Gainsbourg recorded his first album in 1958. But it was at the end of the 1960s that his short affair with Brigitte Bardot changed his jazzy style towards this suggestive music with sumptuous arrangements. He then met Jane Birkin with whom he recorded the 1969 duet "Je t'aime … Moi Non Plus", a song with scorching lyrics punctuated by gasps and explicit moans. Although it was banned in many countries, this song reached the top of the charts all over Europe. In 1971, he released The Story of Melody Nelson, a cycle of dark songs that mark his growing detachment from modern culture. Drugs, disease, suicide and misanthropy become recurring themes in his work.

You're Under Arrest, Gainsbourg's final album, was another collaboration with American Billy Rush in New Jersey.