Charlotte Gainsbourg – 5:55 (2006)

Charlotte Gainsbourg is nowadays probably better known as an actor than as a singer, but I, for one, was aware of her musical career before her acting career. I can't remember where I bought this CD, but I just remember thinking that this album sounds exactly like the French band Air and I like the band, so I'm going to buy this album as well. After buying the album, it became immediately apparent that it actually was Air who was playing on the background. The album actually sounds like a spin-off of Air. Gainsbourg's vocals sound very similar to the female vocals often found on Air's albums. The album sounds very French when it comes to sounds and Air is quite an apparent reason for this. But this is a great dream pop album and I think the collaboration with Air and Gainsbourg works amazingly well.



Gainsbourg is obviously also known for being the child of the French legend Serge Gainsbourg. Apparently Charlotte wanted to distant herself of his father's music by singing in English. There is one song on the album in French as well though. Gainsbourg's vocals are soft and smooth. The production allows us to hear all the little nuances of her voice and it has a very seductive result. Like his father's music, this also has lots of topics about sex and sensuality and her voice is perfect for these types of themes.

I was listening to the lyrics and really liked them. Then I realised that actually most of the lyrics on this album were written by one of my all time musical heroes, Jarvis Cocker. So, no wonder the lyrics are brilliant. Before I knew anything about this album, if someone had told me that there's an album with Air's music and Jarvis Cocker's lyrics, I would've gone and bought the album without knowing basically anything else. It' just fortunate that Charlotte Gainsbourg also plays her part really well. Her voice is quite magical.

I kind of like the idea that on the two previous blog texts, I have shared also a link to a music video. So, even if there's nothing that special going on with this video, I thought it would be good to share one music video of hers. I think it's great that artists still make lots of music videos even though they don't have similar kind of channel since MTV stopped actually being a music video channel. There's always Youtube, but you need to know what you're looking for to come across any great videos.

Charlotte Gainsbourg had performed on an album before this one as early as in 1986. The songs on that album were mainly written by her father Serge Gainsbourg and there are lots of songs with quite sexual topics and definitely seductive tones sung by Serge and Charlotte together. This obviously raised controversy and the album was later on released in France under the title Lemon Incest.

I'm glad Charlotte Gainsbourg decided to return to music after that kind of history, because her singing is very enjoyable. 5:55 is unfortunately not on Spotify, so I will just share a link for the whole album on Youtube.