What a concept

I have got wound up about Benjamin Biolay many, many, many times, and one of those times took a moment to write about how he's not like Serge Gainsbourg despite everybody saying he is. It shouldn't have taken a whole moment - should have only taken half a moment to describe the difference, which is that Benjamin Biolay's music has zero fucking sense of humour/absurdity in comparison. Let's compare concepts one more time:

L'homme au tête de chou
Concept: Having a relationship with a hairdresser who you murder in a fit of jealous rage in the snow, being institutionalized, your head turning into a cabbage and the murdered hairdresser coming back as a rabbit, who eats it
vs
Trash yé yé
Concept: The breakdown of a shitty relationship; culminates in a murder on the kitchen floor.

Hmm. Let's try another.

L'histoire de Melody Nelson
Concept: Hitting a young girl with your Rolls, deflowering her, and then mourning her death in a plane crash to the degree you found your own little cargo cult
vs.
Rose Kennedy
Concept: Rose Kennedy

Well. If I was Benjamin Biolay I'd have a hard time getting in touch with my absurd side too. French pop is all laboured irony and farting accordions these days, so he might be concerned that even a touch of humour or absurdity is going to get him lumped in with Bénabar-grade crap. Or he might be concerned about being compared even more inescapably to Serge Gainsbourg. I don't know. Maybe he just has no sense of humour or absurdity at all. A shocking number of people in France don't. They can be so literal-minded. I think that's because it's too easy to pun in French. You can trip over six or seven puns just walking to the office there so you don't have to get too absurd to play with your language.

Anyways, I hadn't given it much thought until I stumbled across this video and realized I could not imagine Benjamin Biolay ever, ever, ever doing something similar to what Serge Gainsbourg is doing here. Ever. Maybe that's a failure of my imagination but frankly it makes me think less of Benjamin Biolay.

(This video is safe for work but the audio is not, unless you work somewhere weird.)




Of course, when they broke the mold when they made Screamin' Jay Hawkins and he's dead now, so there wouldn't be anyone to do it with even if he wanted to.