Episode #157 | 1.16.24

Serge Gainsbourg: Brigitte Bardot, Bonnie & Clyde, and Orgasmic Pop Songs

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In this episode

In the late 1960s, Serge Gainsbourg carried out an illicit affair with Brigitte Bardot, not only the world’s preeminent sex symbol at the time, but a sex symbol with a powerful millionaire for a husband. Her love inspired Serge to a creative breakthrough, transforming French pop music and the music of the world while their passionate fling was busy barreling toward a doomed ending – an ending as doomed and as shocking as the end of the two outlaws they modeled their romance and their music on.

Sources

Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes, by Sylvie Simmons

Gainsbourg: The Biography, by Gilles Verlant

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, by Jeff Guinn

The Secret World of Serge Gainsbourg (Vanity Fair)

At the Serge Gainsbourg’s Paris House, Time Stands Still (NY Times)

Serge Gainsbourg's 20 most scandalous moments (The Guardian)

Here's the True Story of How Bonnie and Clyde Died (Men’s Health)

Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

Credits

Hosted by Jake Brennan.

Written by Zeth Lundy.

Copy edited by James Sullivan.

Scored and mixed by Sean Cahalin.

Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.

DISGRACELAND theme song, “Crenshaw Space Boogie,” written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava, and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.

*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak