Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)

Histoire de Melody Nelson (French: [istwaʁ də melɔdi nɛlsɔn]; "Story of Melody Nelson") is a 1971 concept album by the French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, arranged and co-written by Jean-Claude Vannier. 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 fourteen-year-old girl Melody Nelson, portrayed on the album and its cover art by Gainsbourg's then-partner Jane Birkin.

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 history.

Concept

At just under twenty-eight minutes, the short running time and the stylistic consistency and similarity throughout Histoire de Melody Nelson give it qualities more in line with an extended play or a single continuous suite. Its mix of funk-style electric guitar and bass guitar, Gainsbourg's spoken word and Sprechgesang vocal styles, and lush string and choral arrangements by arranger and co-writer Jean-Claude Vannier, have proven to be highly influential amongst later musical performers.

The cover photograph was shot by Tony Frank. It depicts Gainsbourg's partner Jane Birkin wearing a red wig, and with her jeans rolled down slightly to accommodate her early stage of pregnancy.

Plot

While recklessly driving his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost one night, 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, England, but an autopilot malfunction 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.

Critical reception

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. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic described the album as "arguably [Gainsbourg's] most coherent and perfectly realized studio album...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." 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." Tom Ewing of Pitchfork gave the album a perfect score, particularly praising the opening and closing tracks as depictions of "the black spaces of a man's interior." He also lauded the "originality" of the record, describing its sound as like "nothing else in rock." D.M. Edwards of PopMatters commented that "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."