Last night we went to see Charlotte Gainsbourg sing for the first time in London. At a fairly busy Shepherds Bush Empire, a crowd that consisted of a large proportion of French speakers waited in anticipation for the actress daughter of the famous singer to show us her own skills. As you might expect, they weren’t quite up to the high bar Serge set, but Charlotte has created her own style to set herself apart and it works well.
The crowd responded well to tracks such as Master’s Hands and the excellent IRM, which work best with Charlotte’s soft voice, but it was for covers of her dad’s songs that the crowd went wild – especially a finale of Couleur Cafe. The singing shadow of Serge Gainsbourg is hard to avoid if you’re his only heir, but maybe it’s best to embrace your heritage at times. As Charlotte herself said in a recent interview when asked who she would invite to her dream dinner party?: “Ghosts. Yvan, my children and my father, because they never met.”