(Credits: Far Out / Top of The Pops / BBC)
Mon 16 March 2026 20:10, UK
If you’re setting out to write a number one hit, one of the first things you should consider is the subject matter of your lyrics.
Stay away from excessive expletives, overt depictions of sex or violence, or anything that might harm your chances at mainstream airplay. Sing about love or the loss of it, sing about inspiration or togetherness, sing about anything that won’t get you banned from mainstream radio stations and Top of the Pops.
Or, ignore all of those directives completely and pen one of the sultriest songs of all time, knowing it will rise to the top of the charts not despite its sexual nature, but because of it.
This is the path that Serge Gainsbourg opted to take in the late 1960s when he penned ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’. Spawning from a failed date with actor Brigitte Bardot, Gainsbourg recorded the song in 1969 and recruited fellow actor Jane Birkin to join him in the studio.
Together, they created one of the most sensual songs of all time. Instrumentally, the song featured a sultry combination of guitar strums, occasional strings, and a gentle organ, setting the scene for the romantic lyrics. But it was Gainsbourg and Birkin’s duet that made ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ so sultry. While the songwriter sings in a low voice, Birkin whispers her lines, infusing them with lust and even gasping and moaning towards the climax of the song.
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
The lyrics to ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ are equally sultry, with repeated declarations of “I love you” and lines that translate to “You’re going, you’re going, and you’re coming inside me”. Uncompromising in its sonic depictions of sex, the song didn’t exactly seem primed to go to number one. It was far too noticeably sexual, right?
But Gainsbourg had faith that ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ would become a hit nonetheless. According to Birkin, who recalled the test run during an interview with Mojo, they played the song to an unsuspecting group of restaurant-goers, who were all immediately stopped in their tracks.
“Everybody’s knives and forks were in the air, suspended,” she remembered, “Nobody went on eating. Serge said, ‘I think we’ve got a hit.’”Gainsbourg was right. Despite the subject matter of the song, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ hit number one in the United Kingdom in 1969. In fact, it was the first foreign-language song to achieve this feat, and it did so against all odds. Despite the whispered sexual content, despite the mass bans from radio stations, Gainsbourg and Birkin’s duet still managed to top the charts.
Even though it topped the charts in the United Kingdom, the song wouldn’t receive airtime on chart show Top of the Pops. The programme joined the radio stations that had banned the song and refused to play it. This only added another impressive feat to Gainsbourg’s resume: he had penned the first song that Top of the Pops had refused to play.
Four decades have passed since ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ was first hit or was banned from the airwaves, but the song still retains that sultry quality that endeared so many listeners and repelled many others. The song has been reused, sampled, and parodied consistently ever since its first release, proving that Gainsbourg penned not just a number one hit but an enduring cultural moment.
‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ and Gainsbourg’s sexual revolution
In her diaries, Birkin bemoans the years that she was simply labelled Jane ‘Blow-Up’ Birkin, the scantily clad “it girl”, as opposed to the legitimate actor making steps towards liberation, and then suddenly with ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, the quivering jazzy half-notes of husky French tones launched her as a serious chart-topping artiste.
And Birkin has no problem admitting that this career-defining moment was fuelled by simple envy. Serge Gainsbourg had originally recorded the song with a rival face on the French scene, Brigitte Bardot, but Birkin set about out-sexing the starlet that they called ‘The Sex Kitten’.
“Jealousy drove me to perform the song,” Birkin told Vogue, who was with Gainsbourg at the time. “I didn’t want him to end up in a telephone box with a beautiful girl recording another version of ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, as he’d done with Bardot. When he suggested I do it, I agreed immediately.”
The song was a scandalous revolution sequestered in a million bedrooms. People might see heavy metal as a daring step as the 1960s moved on, but feather-soft tones of femininity were proving just as progressive in the world of music, and it managed to be even more transcendent, too. This 1969 track was, in fact, the forgotten precursor to many things that followed. And there was no way that ‘Top of the Pops’ could stop that.