La Noyée

Let's stay in Gainsbourg-territory, courtesy of guest-selector Edmond Viperenoire. He blew the dust off of a perle cachée (hidden pearl) in the Serge-catologue, La Noyée. Carla Bruni recorded it for her debut-album. Here's a (bit edited) snippet of an interview Jane Birkin did with Carla, about that song:

Jane Birkin: "So, Carla, I wanted to do this interview with you because I don't think I've ever literally stopped the car and thought, Who is this person singing? [Bruni laughs] It's something like velvet when you sing. I thought, How come the words are so subtle? I love that part [in Quelqu'un m'a dit] where you say that 'our lives aren't worth much', and they are 'passing in an instant, like wilting roses.' And you picked up La Noyée, which is one of the most beautiful of Serge's songs!"

Carla Bruni: "I never heard it from him or from you. I only heard it on a movie-soundtrack."

Jane Birkin: "It was in a movie that he did in Yugoslavia [Le Roman d'un voleur de chevaux]. In fact, he was so sexy when he sang it that I rushed back to England so I could start working on [daughter] Charlotte Gainsbourg], because I thought he would fall in love with the beautiful woman he was singing it to at the piano. La Noyée was the cause of Charlotte!" [In his Serge-biography View from the Exterior, Alan Clayson writes about the filming of this movie, during which Serge also negotiated a part in a domestic Yugoslavian film about WW II. Serge and the director argued so much during filming, that Serge, to illustrate he had more than his fill of the director, lit up a cigarette with a Yugoslavian banknote. Which wasn't taken very lightly - police arrived, and it was thought prudent that after the wrap, Serge would take the first flight home]

Carla Bruni, laughing: "But the version I saw was on a dvd about Serge. I remember he was wearing a very tight suit with no tie, and he was a bougie of charm and beauty."

Jane Birkin: "With that song, he went up to see Yves Montand, and he started drinking whisky at eleven o'clock in the morning so that he could look like a real man in front of Montand. After he played with Montand and with the words, 'Tu n'es plus qu'une pauvre épave, Chienne crevée au fil de l'eau' [You're just a pitiful wreck now,/A ravaged bitch drifting with the flow], he was sick all the way back, from all the whiskey. By the time he got home, we got a call from Montand, who said, 'I cannot sing this to Simone' [Signoret, Montand's wife], and we thought, 'Oh, what a dreadful thing. What does he mean?' He obviously thought, that if he sang the song, it would look as if he were talking about Simone, that she was the poor dog that had been dragged down by the river. So that was the only time Serge offered a song out. And since it was refused like that, I don't think Serge ever sang it again himself." [A French expression goes Noyer son chagrin dans l'alcool, which meeans 'To flood one's sorrow in the alcohol'. That was certainly the case for Simone. And Yves Montand was not the most faithful husband.]


Carla Bruni: "The way he sang it was amazing. He was cutting up words the way nobody does. The lyrics are so deep, so strong, and so dark that I love the contrast in his way of singing it and dropping words like tear drops. I'm crazy about the contrast between the very important lyrics and the way he is singing them. He was always like, 'Go! I don't care.' And that's so sexy."
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Serge sang this song during the tv-show Samedi Loisir in 1972, accompanied by the talented arranger Jean-Jacques Vannier. In 1973 Anna Karina did a version for another movie, Vivre Ensemble. Much later, Natsuo Ishido covered it in Japanese on the tribute-album Gainsbourg Made in Japan.
Yann Tiersen did his own version, that was recorded for his live-album C'était ici. Very inspired, Carla Bruni covered it for her first album.
30 years after it was written, this song is as rare as it is than beautiful.

Serge Gainsbourg - La Noyée
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Anna Karina - La Noyée
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Natsuo Ishido - La Noyée
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Yann Tiersen - La Noyée
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Carla Bruni - La Noyée
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