Scarlett Johansson is continuing her musical career, after interpreting a full album of Tom Waits songs ('Anywhere I Lay My Head’), she is now trying herself to cover French musician Serge Gainsbourg. She has recorded a version of the 1968 song ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ with the songwriter’s son, Lulu Gainsbourg, and the result is trying (and failing) to be so close to the original Serge-Gainsbourg-Brigitte-Bardot duo, that I wonder what was the point.
The hushed female-male voices and the slow pace of the song, everything in this track is trying to imitate the original without the pep, the danger and especially the sexiness. I mean Lulu does what he can to imitate his father – and he sounds quite like him – but something is missing, Bardot’s disillusioned tone, and Gainsbourg’s perverse whisper… and by the way Scarlett is singing in English, not in French.
The song comes from an upcoming album ‘From Gainsbourg to Lulu’ which will be released on October 30 in the US, and which is basically a collection of Serge Gainsbourg’s covers by Lulu, … doesn’t it sound a little opportunistic for a first album? Many people are probably not ready to forgive him.
The album will also feature Rufus Wainwright, Iggy pop and Johnny Depp, and this is totally strange since Lulu Gainsbourg looks totally like Depp!
