France Gall - Psychedelic Era and Transition To Adulthood

Psychedelic Era and Transition To Adulthood

At the beginning of the year 1967, Gall sang a duet with Maurice Biraud, La Petite, which describes a young girl coveted by a friend of her father. The controversy over this performance overshadowed her release that year of Gainsbourg’s poetic Néfertiti.

Her next single was recorded with the orchestration of English composer David Whitaker. New authors Frank Thomas and Jean-Michel Rivat were brought on board. They wrote Bébé requin (Baby Shark), a song which met with some success for Gall.

This was followed by Teenie Weenie Boppie, an anti-LSD song by Gainsbourg, which has been described as "a bizarre tune about a deadly LSD trip that somehow involves Mick Jagger." Gainsbourg then sang an anti-capital punishment song with Gall, Qui se souvient de Caryl Chessman? ("Anyone remember Caryl Chessman?"), about the death row prisoner.

Stewart Mason wrote about this period: "The psychedelic era found Gall, under Gainsbourg's guidance, singing increasingly strange songs . . . set to some of Gainsbourg's most out-there arrangements."

Her next record C'est toi que je veux, again with Whitaker, also failed to make an impact.

With this string of recordings in the late 1960s, none of them an unmitigated success, and making the transition from teen-age to adult performer, Gall faced some challenges in this period through the early 1970s. Mason wrote:

No longer a teenager, but without a new persona to redefine herself with, (and without the help of Gainsbourg, whose time was taken by his own albums and those of his wife Jane Birkin), Gall floundered both commercially and artistically. A label change from Philips to BASF in 1972 didn't help matters . . . "