The Underground of Happiness

We've spoken about Serge Gainsbourg in these pages before . His Histoire de Melody Nelson album from 1971 is one of the great concept albums, in fact albums full stop. Which you might not guess to read this description. http://www.allmusic.com/album/histoire-de-melody-nelson-r288302 You don't need to speak a word of French to understand Histoire de Melody Nelson - one needs only to look at the front cover (with its nearly pornographic portrait of a half-naked nymphet clutching a rag doll) or hear the lechery virtually dripping from Serge Gainsbourg's sleazily seductive voice to realize that this is the record your mother always warned you about, a masterpiece of perversion and corruption. A concept record exploring the story of - and Gainsbourg's lust for - the titular teen heroine, Histoire de Melody Nelson is arguably his most coherent and perfectly realized studio album, with the lush arrangements which characterize the majority of his work often mixed here wit...