Actress, singer, and style icon Jane Birkin had a definitive influence on culture in the '60s and beyond, starting her career with roles in art house films like Blow-Up and Wonderwall, and making a musical mark with her breathy, mysterious vocals on collaborative tracks with Serge Gainsbourg. Her romantic and creative partnership with Gainsbourg yielded classic lounge pop albums like 1969's Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus (the title track of which was banned from radio in several countries for being too sexually explicit, but still managed to top the charts in the U.K.) and 1971's Histoire de Melody Nelson. Birkin had a long and fruitful life in both music and film well after she and Gainsbourg parted ways in 1980, touring regularly and releasing albums of her own songs like 2008's Enfants d'Hiver.
Born in London in 1946, Birkin followed in her mother's footsteps and began acting at the Kensington Academy in London. While still a teenager, she made her stage debut in Graham Greene's 1964 production Carving a Statue. One year later, she was offered a part in Passion Flower Hotel, a musical produced by James Bond series composer John Barry, and she married him soon after. Birkin's first film, The Knack...And How to Get It, followed in 1965, while a role in 1966's Blow-Up made her semi-famous.
Her marriage with Barry soon broke up, however, and on a trip to France she met Gallic pop star Serge Gainsbourg. The two eventually became romantically entwined, and Birkin lent her vocal talents to Gainsbourg's 1969 recording of the erotic pop song "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus." Originally released by Fontana Records in Britain, the single was soon dropped by the label; reissued on the Major Minor imprint, it hit number one in England late that year, despite a radio ban. The collaborative LP Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus soon followed, though Birkin spent much of the early '70s working in films. She appeared in a lot of exploitation fare, including Sex Power, Romance of a Horse Thief, and Don Juan 73, the latter featuring her as the same-sex lover of Brigitte Bardot. With help from Gainsbourg, she recorded 1975's Lolita Go Home and 1978's Ex Fan des Sixties, gaining hits in France, if not in England.
Birkin and Gainsbourg were never married, but were together for 12 years and had daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, who would go on to become a singer and actress in her own right. The relationship was turbulent, and completely dissolved in 1980. Birkin later married French director Jacques Doillon. She continued performing, acting, and making music, mostly directed at a French audience, until 2006, when she released Fictions. The album included both a Tom Waits and a Neil Young cover, along with new material from songwriters Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy, the Magic Numbers, Beth Gibbons, and Rufus Wainwright. The self-penned Enfants d'Hiver arrived in 2008 and was followed by the double-live Au Palace a year later. In 2010, Light in the Attic reissued the classic 1969 set Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg.
Birkin didn't stop working but focused more on touring than recording. In 2011, after the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, she gave two benefit quartet concerts and was introduced to pianist/composer and arranger Nobuyuki Nakajima, who worked extensively with Ryuichi Sakamoto and scored numerous films in his own right. The quartet's shows were so successful, they toured for two years. In 2016, the FrancoFolies Festival of Quebec commissioned Birkin to create a "Gainsbourg Symphonic" concert with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Leclerc. Birkin and Nakajima worked with Gainsbourg's longtime producer Philippe Lerichomme. A concert documentary and subsequent press notices in Montreal prompted a European and Japanese tour. Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique was released by Parlophone in March of 2017, while the show was on the road. It debuted at number six on the French top albums chart, and remained in the Top 40 for 12 weeks. It re-entered the same chart in June. The recording also debuted in the number three spot on European streaming charts and remained in the Top Ten for nearly two months. In September 2021, Birkin suffered a stroke, which forced her to cancel a scheduled tour, and while she recovered enough to return to performing, another series of concerts were postponed when she broke her shoulder in March 2022. On July 16, 2023, it was announced by the French Ministry of Culture that Jane Birkin had died at her home in Paris. She was 76 years old. ~ John Bush
