Serge Gainsbourg
L'Homme à tête de chou

THE REVIEW

Do you like decadent stories full of love, sex, death, and other little trifles? You've admired the perfection of certain novels like Oscar Wilde's "Salomé", Huysmann's "Against Nature", even D'Annunzio's "The Pleasure" wasn't bad. You've rightly admired them, but I know, my dear readers, that you want more. You want its equivalent in musical form, indeed as a concept album. Well, if you're a bit familiar with French, you've found it.

In two words, the plot (spoiler warning: if you're fanatical about these things, don't read it and quickly close the link to avoid spoiling the pleasure of the first listen). A tabloid reporter (in French "cabbage leaf") one day walks into a hair salon and falls desperately in love with a shampoo girl. He takes her out, dances with her, and later flies over her like an airplane. But this is just the beginning of his troubles. One day, returning home, he catches her with two rocker macaques in the attitude of "a two-jack guitar"... In his despair, he will kill her and cover her with the snow-colored foam of a fire extinguisher. His delirium will end in an asylum, with Playboy bunnies gnawing on his cabbage-like vegetable skull.

The plot read like this seems eccentric and a bit vulgar, the record is not at all, it has an almost classical composure. For those who do not know, Gainsbourg is a true genius of the French language, a new Prevert. Additionally, he has the gift of turning trash into gold, akin to Quentin Tarantino. The arrangements are good too.

Naturally, the comparison with the more famous and equally magnificent "Histoire de Melody Nelson" spontaneously arises. But we know well that every genius actually has monothematic obsessions...