Charlotte Gainsbourg has every right to feel pleased with herself. She is starring in Michel Gondry’s much anticipated film The Science of Sleep, due for release in the autumn, in which she plays opposite Gael García Bernal. Next month, she has an album out called 5.55. The music was written by Air, the lyrics by Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon, and the arrangements are by Beck’s dad, David Campbell.
All this, and still Charlotte lives in her father’s shadow. He may have been dead for 15 years, but 5.55 is totally indebted to Serge Gainsbourg’s darkly erotic sound, and his daughter is quite happy for it to be this way. If Serge were still with us, you can bet that the album would include a couple of duets. They had form on this. His Love on the Beat album of 1984 featured Serge and his then 13-year-old daughter on a song based on a Chopin prelude.
The fact that Gainsbourg electro-jazzed up a classic was mildly controversial, the fact that the song was called Lemon Incest a little more so. The video featured father and daughter on a circular bed. When he was accused of being a paedophile, Gainsbourg shrugged and said he could never see the attraction — little girls smell of p*** on one side and s*** on the other. As for Charlotte, she recalled the whole experience (released as a single, it went to No 1 in France) as “completely innocent and easy”.
But you don’t need lyrics such as Lemon Incest’s “the love that we will never make together” for a father-daughter pop relationship to be creepy. Take Frank Sinatra’s “management” of his daughter Nancy’s career. When she became a singer Dad signed her to his own label, Reprise. His presence, he seemed to think, would be enough to shift Nancy’s schlocky songs such as Cuff Links and a Tie Clip. But she had a hit only when she was paired with Lee Hazlewood. He wrote These Boots are Made for Walking and told her to sing it like “a 14-year-old who goes with truck drivers”. It went to No 1.
Ol’ Blue Eyes now cashed in with the obligatory duet, on which Nancy may not have sounded like a slutty truckstop gal but she did sound a little tipsy. Not surprising when you listen to the lyrics of Somethin’ Stupid, which are about dancing and romancing and the confusion of love’s early bloom.
Advertisement
If this wasn’t uncomfortable enough, Frank took the lead, with his daughter’s muted harmony a virtual monotone. That’ll teach her for selling more records than Pop.
Currently touring the world are Glen Campbell and his daughter Debbie. She strolls on to sing the chair-squeakingly embarrassing I’m the Rhinestone Cowboy’s Daughter, allowing her dad a toilet break, before he rejoins her three minutes later for a sugary duet on Let It Be Me.
Glen can still cut it on Wichita Lineman and By the Time I Get to Phoenix, but Debbie sings the supposedly indestructable Stand by Your Man with all the emotion of a bored shopgirl. Which she probably is, as she hawks her Dad’s CDs around the seats during the interval.
The Fifties rocker Marty Wilde had bigger plans for his daughter, Kim. And she became a bona fide pop star. The fact that Marty, in his forties, could write lyrics about such bizarre subjects as tinnitus (Water on Glass), fear of flying (Chaos at the Airport), and the war in Cambodia meant that sappy duets were not on the cards. If Dad could turn his hand to shiny pop classics such as Kids in America, why go and spoil it all by singing Somethin’ Stupid? Nat “King” Cole had been in the ground for more than 20 years when he was digitally reborn on Unforgettable, apparently singing alongside his daughter Natalie. More recently they “performed” When I Fall in Love together. “I didn’t want to do another tribute to my Dad’s music,” Natalie claimed, “but it seemed so natural.” Seeing as Unforgettable’s parent album won seven Grammies and sold six million copies, you can see how natural Natalie must find it.
Lemon Incest was pretty much on its own as a listenable father-daughter duet until Johnny Cash sang with his daughter Roseanne on 2003’s September When it Comes. Roseanne was rightly worried that a duet with her father could be seen as naff but, with Johnny’s health failing — he died the same year — she was swayed. What’s more, the song is about mortality and unresolved emotions, not romance. Father-daughter duets never work — September When it Comes is the exception that proves the rule.
Advertisement
Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55 will be released by Because on Sept 4